Note 325 — Front matter (continued 7)

Lettres familières (1858), i., 250-1. The President was in Rome during the conclave in the following year and repeated that Lambertini was "licentious in speech but exemplary in conduct" (ii., 399). On a later page (439) he frankly describes the Pope as "indecent in speech." There is a passage in one of the Pope's later letters to Cardinal Tencin which may illustrate his censure. Benedict tells the Cardinal that he has bought a nude Venus for his collection, and finds that the Prince and Princess of Württemberg have, with a diamond ring, scratched their names on a part of the statue which one may not particularize as plainly as the Pope does (Correspondance de Benoît XIV., ii., 268).