First of all, you will notice that I have an eye for everything; that I occupy myself with Reshid Pasha[100] and M. de Blacas; that I defend my privileges and rights as Ambassador to Rome against all comers; that I am crafty, false (an eminent quality!) and cunning to such an extent that, when M. de Funchal, in an equivocal position, writes to me, I do not reply to him, but go to see him with astute politeness, so that he is unable to show a line in my handwriting and is nevertheless satisfied. There is not an imprudent word to be criticized in my conversations with Cardinals Bernetti and Albani, the two secretaries of State; nothing escapes me; I descend to the pettiest details; I restore the accounts of the affairs of the French in Rome in such a way that they still exist on the basis on which I have placed them. With an eagle's glance, I perceive that the Treaty of Trinità de' Monti, between the Holy See and the Ambassadors Laval and Blacas, is irregular, and that neither party had the right to conclude it. Mounting higher, and coming to the greater diplomacy, I take upon myself to give the exclusion to a cardinal, because a minister of foreign affairs has left me without instructions and exposes me to seeing a creature of Austria elected Pope. I procure the secret journal of the Conclave: a thing that no ambassador has ever been able to obtain; day by day I send the list of names and votes. Nor do I neglect Bonaparte's family: I do not despair, by means of good treatment, of persuading Cardinal Fesch to send in his resignation as Archbishop of Lyons. If a _Carbonaro_ stirs, I am informed of it and able to judge how much truth there is in the conspiracy; if an abbé intrigues, I am aware of it, and I baffle the plans that had been formed to separate the French cardinals from the French Ambassador. Lastly, I discover that a great secret has been deposited by the Cardinal de Latil in the bosom of the Grand Penitentiary. Are you satisfied? Is that a man who knows his trade? Very well, and now see: I dispatched all this diplomatic business like the first ambassador that comes, without its costing me an idea, in the same way as a booby of a Lower Norman peasant knits his stockings while watching his sheep: my sheep were my dreams.