’There is little value now for property or for law, though the Government professes to respect them.  What, will it be when the Government professes to hate them?’

Wednesday, August 14.—­We talked at breakfast of Rome.

‘Is there,’ said Beaumont to Ampere, ‘still an Inquisition at Rome?’

‘There is,’ said Ampere, ’but it is torpid.  It punishes bad priests, but does little else.’

‘If a Roman,’ I asked, ’were an avowed infidel, would it take notice of him?’

‘Probably not,’ said Ampere, ’but his cure might—­not for his infidelity, but for his avowing it.  The cure who has always the powers of a commissaire de police, might put him in prison if he went into a cafe and publicly denied the Immaculate Conception, or if he neglected going to church or to confession:  but the Inquisition no longer cares about opinions.’

‘Is there much infidelity,’ I asked, ‘in Rome?’

‘Much,’ said Ampere, ’among the laity.  The clergy do not actively disbelieve.  They go through their functions without ever seriously inquiring whether what they have to teach be true or false.  No persons were more annoyed by the Mortara[1] business than the clergy, with the exception of Antonelli.  He hates and fears the man who set it on foot, the Archbishop of Bologna, and therefore was glad to see him expose himself, and lose all hope of the Secretaryship, but he took care to prevent the recurrence of such a scandal.  He revived an old law prohibiting Jews from keeping Christian nurses.  But he could scarcely order restitution.  According to the Church it would have been giving the child to the Devil, and, what is worse, robbing God of him.  The Pope’s piety is selfish.  His great object is his own salvation.  He would not endanger that, to confer any benefit upon, or to avert any evil from Rome; or indeed from the whole world.  This makes him difficult to negotiate with.  If anything is proposed to him which his confessor affirms to be dangerous to his soul, he listens to no arguments.  As for Mortara himself, he is a poor creature.  A friend of mine went to see him in his convent.  All that he could get from him was: 

’"Sono venuti i Carabinieri.”

’"And what did they do to you?”

‘"M’ hanno portato qui.”

’"What more?”

‘"M’ hanno dato pasticci; erano molto buoni.”

‘What is most teasing,’ continued Ampere, ’in the Roman Government is not so much its active oppression as its torpidity.  It hates to act.  An Englishman had with great difficulty obtained permission to light Rome with gas.  He went to the Government in December, and told them that everything was ready, and that the gas would be lighted on the 1st of January.

’"Could you not,” they answered, “put it off till April?”

’"But it is in winter,” he replied; “that it is wanted.  Every thing is ready.  Why should we wait?”