The members of the Italian secret societies impute to him--though for other reasons--all the evils which afflict their country. It is evident that the Italian question would be greatly simplified, if there were no Pope at Rome; but the hatred of the Mazzinists against Pius IX. is to be condemned in all its personal aspects. They would kill him to a certainty, if our troops were not there to defend him. This murder would be as unjust as that of Louis XVI., and as useless. The guillotine would deprive a good old man of his life, but it would not put an end to the bad principle of sacerdotal monarchy. I did not seek an audience of Pius IX.; I neither kissed his hand nor his slipper; the only mark of attention I received from him was a few lines of insult in the _Giornale di Roma_. Still, I never can hear him accused without defending him. Let my readers for a moment put themselves in the place of this too illustrious and too unfortunate old man. After having been for nearly two years the favourite of public opinion, and the _lion_ of Europe, he found himself obliged to quit the Quirinal palace at a moment's notice. At Gaeta and Portici he tasted those lingering hours which sour the spirit of the exile. A grand and time-honoured principle, of which the legitimacy is not doubtful to him, was violated in his person. His advisers unanimously said to him: "It is your own fault. You have endangered the monarchy by your ideas of progress. The immobility of governments is the _sine quâ non_ of the stability of thrones. You will not doubt this, if you read again the history of your predecessors." He had had time to become converted to this belief, when the armies of the Catholic powers once more opened for him the road to Rome. Overjoyed at seeing the principle saved, he vowed to himself never again to compromise it, but to reign without progress, according to papal tradition. But these very foreign powers who had saved his crown, were the first to impose on him the condition of advancing! What was to be done? He was equally afraid to promise everything, and to refuse everything. After a long hesitation, he promised in spite of himself; then he absolved himself, for the sake of the future, from the engagements he had made for the sake of the present. Now he is out of humour with his people, with the French, and with himself. He knows the nation is suffering, but he allows himself to be persuaded that the misfortunes of the nation are indispensable to the safety of the Church. Those about him take care that the reproaches of his conscience shall be stifled by the recollections of 1848 and the dread of a new revolution. He stops his eyes and his ears, and prepares to die calmly between his furious subjects on one hand, and his dissatisfied protectors on the other. Any man wanting in energy, placed as he is, would behave exactly in the same manner. The fault is not his, it is that of weakness and old-age.