"Very Holy Father," said the emperor, "the happy result evinced in the morality and character of my people by the re-establishment of the Christian religion, leads me to pray your Holiness to give me a new proof of the interest which your Holiness takes in my destiny and that of this great nation, in one of the most important periods shown in the annals of the world. I beg your Holiness to come and give a religious character of the highest degree to the ceremony of the consecration and coronation of the first Emperor of the French. That ceremony will acquire a new lustre if done by your Holiness. It will bring upon us and our peoples the blessing of God, whose decrees govern according to His will the lot of empires and of families. "Your Holiness knows the friendly feeling which I have long had towards you, and must therefore infer the pleasure which I shall have in giving you fresh proofs. "Thereupon we pray God, most holy father, that He may keep you for many years in the rule and government of our mother the holy Church. "Your devoted son, "Napoleon." The Pope had determined to set out, being convinced that resistance was impossible, and harassed by a serious inquietude the importance of which was afterwards confirmed, and by the vague fears of a sickly old man. He was offended by the contemptuous terms which the foreign ambassadors applied to the condescension of him whom they called the "French emperor's chaplain." His Italian subtilty was disturbed, and his natural kindness chafed by the dryness of the emperor's message. "This is poison which you have brought to me," said he to General Caffarelli, after reading Napoleon's letter. He set out nevertheless, obstinately refusing to take with him Cardinal Consalvi, in whose hands he had placed his abdication. "If they keep me here," said he one day in Paris, "they will find that they only have in their power a wretched monk called Barnabus Chiaramonti." The Pope's departure had been much hastened by the repeated urgency of the emperor, and his journey was so also. The time for the ceremony was fixed without consulting him. As Cardinal Consalvi said in his Memoirs, "they made the holy father gallop from Rome to Paris like an almoner summoned by his master to say mass."