"As for the political point of view, Italy is not at this day to be juggled away through police intrigues and a cypher correspondence; to allow the Legations to be occupied or to place an Austrian garrison at Ancona on some pretext or other would mean stirring up Europe and declaring war against France: now we are no longer in 1814, 1815, 1816 and 1817; a greedy and unjust ambition is not to be satisfied before our eyes with impunity. And so, that Cardinal Albani is in receipt of a pension from Prince Metternich; that he is a kinsman of the Duke of Modena[72], to whom he declares himself to be leaving his enormous fortune; that he is hatching a little plot with that Prince against the Heir to the Crown of Sardinia[73]: all that is true, all that would have been dangerous at the time when secret and absolute governments set soldiers dimly in movement behind the shelter of a dim dispatch; but, in these days, with public governments, with liberty of the press and of free speech, with the telegraph and general rapidity of communication, with knowledge of affairs spread through the several classes of society, we are protected against the conjuring tricks and artifices of the old diplomacy. At the same time it cannot be denied that there are drawbacks attached to an _Austrian chargé d'affaires_ in the position of Secretary of State in Rome; there are even certain notes (those for instance relating to the imperial power in Italy) which it would not be possible to place in Cardinal Albani's hands. "No one has yet been able to fathom the secret of an appointment which everybody dislikes, including even the Cabinet of Vienna. Has this to do with interests foreign to politics? They say that Cardinal Albani is at this moment offering to make the Holy Father an advance of 200,000 piastres of which the Roman Government stands in need; others pretend that this sum will be lent by an Austrian banker. Cardinal Macchi told me on Saturday last that His Holiness, not wishing to re-appoint Cardinal Bernetti and desirous, nevertheless, of giving him a big place, found no other means of arranging things than to make vacant the Bologna Legation. Wretched little difficulties often become the motives of the most important resolutions. If Cardinal Macchi's version is the true one, all that Pius VIII. is doing and saying for the _satisfaction_ of the Crowns of France and Austria would be only an apparent reason, by the aid of which he would seek to mask his own weakness in his own eyes. For the rest, no one believes that Albania ministry will last. So soon as he begins to enter into relations with the ambassadors, difficulties will spring up on every hand. [Sidenote: The position of Italy.]