When the Pope, sad and discouraged, at last set out for Rome, 4th April, 1805, he had obtained none of the favors which he thought he had a right to expect. The emperor was inflexible on the question of the "organic articles," making no concession as to their application. The statement presented by the Pope and drawn up by Cardinal Antonelli, the most enthusiastic of his councillors, was on Napoleon's orders replied to by Portalis, who was skilful in concealing the refusal under the grave phraseology of legal and Christian language. Urged to extremity, Pius VII. applied to the emperor himself to ask the restoration of the Legations. Talleyrand wrote in reply, "France has very dearly bought the power which she enjoys. It is not in the emperor's power to take anything from an empire which is the fruit of ten years' war and bloodshed, continued with an admirable courage and accompanied with the most unhappy agitation and an unexampled constancy. It is still less in his power to diminish the territory of a foreign state which, by entrusting him with the care of governing, had laid upon him the duty of protecting it." A few sentences added by the emperor to the diplomatic document left room for vague hopes of certain consolations. The illusions of Pius VII. began to disappear; without compensation or recompense, he had worked to consolidate for a short time the throne of the conqueror; the conquests which he had won were not of this world; the complete submission of the constitutional bishops, and the genuine respect with which the French people constantly surrounded him were due to the personal veneration which he inspired. When at last he crossed the mountains the Emperor Napoleon had reached Italy before him, as if to indicate more emphatically the condescension which the sovereign pontiff had shown to him. It was at Turin that he finally took leave of Pius VII., letting him return to Rome while he took in the cathedral of Milan the iron crown of the Lombard kings, and placed it on his head before an immense crowd of on-lookers, using the traditional words of the ancient Lombard monarchy, "God has given it me, who dare touch it?"