The council had not insisted, and the court of Rome felt their force of resistance becoming weaker every day. The death of the Duc d'Enghien had caused the Pope much sorrow:--"My tears now," said Pius VII., "at the death of the one and the attempt upon the other." The French bishops who had not resigned had renewed their protestations against the Concordat. The Sacred College, when consulted as to the journey of the holy father, were divided in their opinion. Five cardinals declared that by so doing the Pope would ratify all the usurpations of which the new Emperor of the French had rendered himself culpable; fifteen showed less severity, but all insisted upon surrounding the solicited favor with numerous conditions. "The actual advantage to religion expressly professed in the invitation which his Holiness is about to accept, but actually injured in the result, can alone excuse in the eyes of Catholics the temporary abandonment of the holy seat," wrote Cardinal Consalvi to Cardinal Caprara: "the dignity and honor of the head of religion both require it." He also wrote, "The form of oath taken by the emperor raises great difficulties. We cannot admit the oath _to respect and caused to be respected the laws of the Concordat_, which is the same thing as saying that one must respect the organic articles and cause them to be respected. _To respect the liberty of worship_ supposes an engagement not to tolerate and allow, but to sustain and protect, and extends not only to persons, but to the thing, that is to say to all forms of worship. But a Catholic cannot defend the error of false forms of worship." Cardinal Caprara, as papal legate in Paris, and Cardinal Fesch, as French ambassador in Rome, explained away or avoided the difficulties. The legate, always timid and easily persuaded, gave grounds for hopes which he was not always able to realize; the cardinal, haughty and violent, divided between devotion to his all-powerful nephew and his own restoration to ecclesiastical practices and sentiments, was at Rome lavish of presents and threats. He at the same time advised the court of Rome to claim the Legations, whatever were the scruples of the Pope to confound temporal questions with spiritual concessions. Skilful in making use of the real Intentions or wishes which he was aware of, without compromising his government by any formal engagement, Cardinal Fesch at last triumphed over the repugnances of the Pope by avoiding most of the conditions of the Holy College, and on the 30th September, 1804, he presented to Pius VII. General Caffarelli, the emperor's deputy at Rome, instead of the two bishops formerly insisted upon. Still less explicit than his ambassador, Napoleon gave no hopes to the holy father of the important concessions with which the latter was fondly flattering himself.