the sufficiency of the votes to carry the election. The abstention of Baronius and his friend could in nowise have affected the result. Yet Aldobrandino, before proceeding to the chapel, made another-the eighth-effort to carry Baronius with him. If we are to suppose that this anxiety was caused simply by respect for the high character and reputation of Baronius, and by an uneasy sense of the responsibility of proceeding to the election of the Pope despite the manifest disapprobation and silent protest of the man whose character had greater weight than that of any other there, it deserves noting as an example of conscientiousness so rare and strange in that world of sacerdotal princes, as to seem almost incredible to us, and quite so to the bystanders who witnessed it. So much so, that our conclavist guide to these mysteries declares that Aldobrandino's imprudence could only be accounted for on the supposition of an immediate interposition of Providence, thus working out its own designs for the election.

On receiving this eighth message, which begged that Baronius and Tarugio would come and confer with Aldobrandino, without any reference to the matter immediately in hand, Baronius yielded, and following the messenger to the great hall, found himself there in the midst of the unanimous assembly of nearly the whole Conclave, bent on proceeding at once to the "Adoration." Aldobrandino had evidently calculated on his not having sufficient moral courage to stand out alone and conspicuously beneath the eyes of his assembled colleagues. But his calculation had been based on an insufficient estimate of the man. Not only did he adhere to his

refusal to join in the vote, but proceeded openly to state his reasons for doing so. Their first and absolute duty, he said, was to elect a man of irreproachable character; and for his part it should be written in his Annals* that he was the last to concur in the choice proposed. It was answered by those around that the election was good and respectable, and the subject of it certainly a worthy one; an assertion which he repudiated, says the conclavist, by the most expressive gestures, "beating his breast, and shaking his head, and uttering broken words and sighs."

Conduct so frank and vehement, a manifestation of sentiments so open, public, and fearless, was almost unprecedented in that world of cautious reticence and simulation, and the result produced by it on the dignified crowd around was remarkable. Montalto first, who saw in this unexpected diversion a possibility of escaping from the election which a moment ago seemed inevitable, and which was fatal to all his cherished hopes, was, or pretended † to be, extremely agitated, and cried out that in truth it were well to lay to heart the words

• The "Annali" is the great work by which Baronius is known to the world. The conclavist makes a ludicrous and inconceivable error in his record of this declaration of the great Church historian. He protested, says the conclavist-or the printer for him-that it should be written in his boots,-"negli suoi stivali." The real phrase is supplied by the Venetian ambassador's account of the Conclave.

† Montalto was one of the last men in the Conclave to have been really touched by any such appeal. Here is a character of him, as he was thirteen years before the present time. "A handsome young man, luxurious, with no firmness of character, broken by debauch, with an income of an hundred thousand crowns, and debts to the amount of four hundred thousand, it was impossible that he should be his own master. His passions, his vices, constrained him to be dependent upon the courts of Europe. He had offered himself to the King of Spain, and had been accepted."

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they had just heard! Sordi, who stood next to him, and who was one of the representatives of the French interest, to which Baronius was especially acceptable, cried out that a saint of God had spoken, and that the words of such a man should not be let fall to the ground. Montalto, finding himself thus seconded, "lost his head altogether," says the conclavist; and forgetting that in the last Conclave, which had closed little more than a month ago, he had especially excluded Baronius, cried aloud, "Let us elect Baronius! I go for Baronius!" Some of his own friends took up the cry; and all the French adherents shouted "Baronius! Baronius!" and the conclavists outside the circle raised the same cry. On this the friends of Aldobrandino, and several of the party of the allies, began to shout "Tosco! Tosco!" to the utmost power of their lungs. "And thus," in the words of our narrator, "all screaming together, and moving on together, divided in cry and in mind, but with their bodies closely jammed together by reason of the narrowness of the passage, they reached the Sala Regia, into which they burst confusedly, shouting more loudly than ever the names of Tosco and Baronius."

The Sala Regia is a noble hall in the Vatican, at one end of which is the entrance into the Sistine Chapel, and at the other that into the Paoline Chapel. It is necessary to the understanding of the sequel of this extraordinary scene to bear in mind this explanation of the locality.

The result, it will be observed, of the sudden gust, which had thus in a moment blown to the winds the chances of an election so nearly consummated, and had

the germ in it of so many modifications of the subsequent history of Europe, was at the moment to throw all the party arrangements and tactics of the Conclave into utter confusion. Baronius, whose leading supporter was now Montalto, was a member of the opposite party, of which Aldobrandino was the head. On the other hand, many of the allies who recognised Montalto as their chief remained firm in their resolution to elect Tosco, and thus found themselves joined with Aldobrandino against their own leader. In this state of things the confusion in the hall was extreme. Montalto and Baronius and their adherents made for the Paoline Chapel, and Aldobrandino wavered for a moment whether he should follow them. But determining, after a short pause, not to give up the game, he shouted at the top of his voice, "This way, all friends of mine!" pointing as he spoke towards the Sistine Chapel. Acquaviva also, and some others of the same party, cried out as loudly as they could, "Let all friends of Tosco come this way!" And the move, says the conclavist, was a very prudent one, "for if they had all gone in disorder into the Paoline Chapel together, it might very easily have happened that the 'Adoration' of Baronius had followed, without their being able to oppose it, amid all that confusion and mixing up of the different parties."

The extent of this confusion, and of the violence of the emotion among those holy and reverend old men, may be estimated from the circumstance that Cardinal Visconti was thrown down in the mêlée, and Cardinal Serapino got a sprained arm before the two factions could disengage themselves from each other. And even

then two Cardinals, Pinelli and Ascoli, found themselves on the Sistine side of the hall with Aldobrandino, whereas their intention was to vote with Montalto.

All this time Cardinal Tosco, who "deemed his greatness was a-ripening," had been awaiting the expected arrival of the cardinals to bring him into the chapel to his "Adoration; " but at last his mind began to misgive him. He sent again, therefore, the same conclavist to see what was going on, and soon received the tidings of the sudden wreck of all his high hopes at the moment when the realisation of them seemed to have

been placed beyond danger. "The good old man,” says the conclavist, forgetting what he had above written of his unfitness for the Papacy, or more probably, perhaps, deeming that there was no incompatibility between that and the epithet he now bestows upon him, "turned deadly pale;" but determining not to give up all for lost, proceeded, with shaking steps, and leaning on the shoulder of his conclavist, to the Sala Regia. "Behold the Pope!" cried the conclavist aloud as he entered the hall, thinking that even then, perhaps, the sudden announcement might lead to an "Adoration." The crowd of his supporters, who had by that time grouped themselves before the doors of the Sistine Chapel, received him among them, and, the keys being at that moment brought, they took him with them into the chapel. The other party had taken possession of the Paoline Chapel. But in the first confusion the keys of the Sistine Chapel had been missing, and the Aldobrandino and Tosco faction had been obliged to content themselves with grouping themselves before the doors.