CARDINAL GONSALVI.

Mais! quel rendez-vous! Doctrine of possibilities,—whoever should have predicted to me such an appointment some years back, when I was paddling about the bogs, and knocks, and slieus of the barony of Tireragh, and thinking Father Flyn, of Colooney (the Father John, par parenthèse, of my “Wild Irish Girl”), the greatest hierarch of the Catholic church extant—whoever, “then and there,” should have predicted to me that I should have given rendez-vous to an eminenza—a cardinal secretary—“a prince of the Roman church,”—one who governed him, whose predecessors governed the world—I should have believed the prediction just as much, as the Brewer’s Tub-woman, who married Lawyer Hyde, would have believed the man who might have prophesied her becoming the mother of a Duchess of York, and the grandmother of two queens of England! And where did I give this notable rendez-vous?—“Je vous le donne en une—je vous le donne en quatre,” as Madame de Sévigné says, in setting her daughter to guess who Mademoiselle was going to marry.—Why, in the church of the Quirinal, at Rome, and at the Cardinal’s request! Pardi, my cardinal was none of your ordinary cardinals—none of your Cardinals, who “come with a whoop and come with a call,” and take a cover at your table, and fill your little anti-room with la famiglia,⁠[46] in tarnished liveries and coloured cotton neck-kerchiefs, smelling of the ends of candles, which smoke out of their fusty coat-pockets, and giving, very literally, a mauvais odeur to the whole apartment.

The Cardinal, par excellence, the Cardinal Gonsalvi, was of another étoffe! Sunday after Sunday I had been gazing in awe on his terrible eyes, as they flashed on the whole Conclave, at the head of which he sat in the Pope’s Chapel. There was something superhuman in those eyes!—something

They are now beaming full on me from his most singular portrait, which, among a collection of singular portraits, and placed, as it is, between the original pictures of Alfieri and Byron, extinguishes all that surround it. They would do equally well in a personification of love or murder. Their master-expression was intense passion; but passion directed, not subdued, by craft.

I had heard a great deal of Gonsalvi in France, where he had resided much, and was well known. Talking him over with Denon, the night before we left Paris for Italy, he sketched off his character with his usual finesse of touch and accuracy of drawing—“Grand politique, et un peu libertin; d’ailleurs, homme très-aimable, et tant soit peu dangereux.”⁠[47] Like all men of the temperament which goes to the highest order of genius, the Cardinal Gonsalvi was essentially liberal. What is called liberality is so purely the power of seeing clearly, and judging sagaciously, concerning the actual state of society—its wants, and its means—that able men must be liberal men, sooner or later. The ablest will not wait for the pressure of exigencies. There is something in the nerve, and sinew, and circulation of a man of genius, that forces him on with the age, and leaves him no power of election. Whenever the impulse is crossed or diverted by some private interest, some personal ambition, or individual view, his great career is checked. The “En avant!” of General Buonaparte was the true star of his glory—the return, the retrogradation to old systems and old forms, was the destruction of the emperor! His alliance with the Gothic fabric of Hapsburg was the fatal conjunction that mouldered his new-raised fortunes to the dust. It was the baneful influence of the same incubus of illiberality and despotism which turned Gonsalvi from his high destiny, and made him a dependant, when he should have been a leader. Still, before he caught a view of the papal throne, through the power of Austrian agency, he was so open, so bold in his expression of liberal opinions, not only in temporal but spiritual concerns, that he was suspected of being a member of some of those secret societies which (like the secret tribunal of old,) made even power tremble in its strongest fortress. By some, he was called the Cardinal Carbonaro; and il giacobino and il radicale were names publicly bestowed on one who soon silenced all imputations, by permitting the dungeons of the Papal State to be filled with the victims of that terrible political re-action, which followed close upon the restoration effected by the Holy Alliance.

Gonsalvi was, however, eminently superior to the time and persons under whose influence and power he acted; and his private agency and personal feelings were in perpetual opposition to the public part which, as first minister to Pope Pius the Seventh, he was obliged to act. Had he flourished in remoter times, he would have made a splendid Pope!—a something between Leo the Tenth and Ganganelli—showy, sumptuous and gallant as the first—lettered, liberal, and astute as the latter. As it was, he was chained to the fortunes of his friend, the reigning pontiff—involved in a sort of inevitable dependence upon the dull despotism of Austria, and always en butte to the intrigues of the illiberal, and to the bigotry of the Conclave. Thus circumstanced, he had a part of infinite difficulty to perform. Had he been honest, he would have thrown it up; but he was a churchman, and, in his spiritual ambition, prêtre avant tout. Still, so little did Gonsalvi participate in the cagoterie of his class or order—so little was he bound by prejudice or predilection to the ordinances of the church, that (like the archbishop of Taranto) he was opposed to the celibacy of the priesthood; and he suggested to Buonaparte, that, should the French government demand the liberty of marriage for the ministers of the Gallican church, the court of Rome would not make any objection. “Parce que” (to use his own words) “ce n’était qu’un point de discipline.”⁠[48] Buonaparte agreed with him on the advantage of such an innovation; and said that if he did not urge the point, it was simply because he would not give the collets-montés of the Faubourg St. Germain a pretence for calling the pope an heretic. The proposition and the rejoinder were curious and characteristic. Here, then, was a cardinal out of the “common roll” of cardinals; and I went to Rome, desirous, but hopeless, of knowing him: for it was reported that he had ceased to hold assemblies, or to go to them, and that he was living in official retirement. So I consoled myself with Cardinal Fesch, who was all good humour and good nature; and who allowed me to rummage about his most interesting palace, and admire his gallery and his pontifical toilette—his pictures by Raphael, and his point-laces, enough to make the mouths of Empresses water.

One fine Roman winter morning—(they very much resemble a summer’s day in Ireland)—the Duchess of Devonshire called on me, and, sans préambule, announced the Cardinal Gonsalvi’s desire to make my acquaintance: but, though the duchess did not say as much, I saw there was some little difficulty about the where and the how of this introduction. The cardinal was a minister of state, and I was (“audacious little worm!”) the author of “France!” It was, therefore, rather a delicate matter for him to give me rendez-vous any where on this side the Styx. The Duchess, however, said she would let me know on the following day; and I received the following note, in answer to one I had sent with an inscription on a Roman brick, which I found in the well-known excavation, made by her grace round the column Phocas:—

“My dear Madam,

“I am not an Irishwoman; but I admire Irish talent and imagination, and we are certainly indebted to you for enabling us to judge of them. I return the stone, or brick, with all the rights that I might have to it, and am flattered by the inscription.⁠[49] I also send you the edition of the Fifth Satire of Horace, and am truly gratified by your praise of it. If you will go to the Quirinal chapel on Thursday, I shall have an opportunity of presenting you to Cardinal Gonsalvi. I shall go about eleven.

“Pray believe me very much yours,

“Elizabeth Devonshire.”

“If you wish to go to the chapel to-morrow, (Thursday,) I will call for you a little before eleven, and for Sir Charles also. If the Cardinal stops to speak to me, I shall present you, &c. &c.”

I forget what was the grande cérémonie celebrated on the abovementioned day at the Quirinal; but it was one of singular magnificence. The Duchess of Devonshire had the privilege of places devoted to the families of the Cardinals, and we commanded a full view of that splendid church, which, like the Temple of the Sun, whose site it occupies, was all light, lustre, and effulgence. The central nave was thronged with the dignitaries of the church, in grand costume, abbots, priors, and monsignori—

The tribunes were filled with representatives of the beauty and fashion of Europe, from the Niemen to the Thames. The pope was on his throne; the conclave sat beneath him, in vestments of eastern amplitude and splendour; while at their feet were ranged their humble caudatori. The pope pontificated; and when the censers had flung their odours on the air, and the loud hosannas had ceased to peal, a procession began, which was one of the most imposing I ever beheld. The pope, borne aloft on his moveable throne, and on the necks of his servants, appeared like some idol of pagan worship. The members of the conclave, two by two, followed; their trains of violet velvet, held up by the caudatori. The whole spectacle passed on, and, half way down the great vestibule which precedes the chapel, disappeared among its lofty and massive columns. The Cardinal Secretary then broke off from the line of march, and joined us, as we stood under the shadow of a pillar.

The presentation was as unceremonious, as the conversation which ensued was pleasant, easy, and spirituel. We talked of France, and the persons we mutually knew there; and I saw that there was a playful attempt to draw me out on the subject of Rome and the actual order of things in Italy, more flattering than fair, and which I parried as well as I could. Before we parted, he proposed, with great politeness, calling on us the following day; but, as we were lodged (as were many of our betters) au vingt-cinquième, I declined the honor till after our return from Naples.

Cardinal Gonsalvi conversed in French like a Parisian, and his phrases were epigrammatic and well turned. As we stood in the partial shadow of one of the great columns, with some streaks of bright light falling from a high window on the rich robes and diamond buckles of his eminence, I was struck by the oddity of the group. The fine figure and countenance, and magnificent costume of the Roman Cardinal,—the sybil air and look of the British peeress, whose tall, slight form, wrapt in a black velvet mantle, surmounted by a black hat, and one sweeping feather, such as Rubens would have delighted to copy,—and my own “Little Red-riding-hood” appearance (as Irish as if I had never left the banks of the Liffey)—and again, the true impersonation of all that is most English in physiognomy and tournure in my English husband—it was a picture to fill the canvas of a Callot or a Caravaggio! What was most odd in all this, was the conjunction of personages so apparently incongruous. This could not have happened fifty years back. What effected it now? The “march of intellect!” with its seven-league boots, like those of the Marquis of Carabas! Ochone! a little wild Irish woman to march from the banks of the Bog of Allan, to hold a colloquy sublime on the banks of the Tiber, on the Mons Quirinalis, with a Roman Cardinal.—That is a march with a vengeance!