After the craven conduct of the deputies, it is no wonder if the dregs of the people went further, and paraded the streets singing songs in praise of the assassin.  The Pope summoned the Presidents of the two Chambers and Marco Minghetti, whom he requested to form a new ministry.  But the time for regular proceeding was past; the city was in the hands of the mob, which imposed on the Pope the acceptance of a ministry of nonentities nominated by it.  The Swiss Guard fired on the crowd which attempted to gain access to the Quirinal; the crowd, reinforced by the Civic Guard, returned to the attack and fired against the walls, a stray shot killing Monsignor Palma, who was in one of the rooms.  The Pope decided on flight.  He left Rome in disguise during the evening of the 25th of November.  After gaining the Neapolitan frontier, he took the road to Gaeta.  The illusion of the Pope Liberator ended with the Encyclical; the illusion of the Constitutional Pope ended with the flight to Gaeta.  Pius IX. was only in a limited degree responsible for his want of success, because the task he had set before him was the quadrature of the circle in politics.

The weight of a less qualified responsibility rests upon him for his subsequent actions.  On the 3rd of December Parliament voted a proposal to send a deputation to the Pope, praying him to return to his States.  To give the deputation greater authority, the Municipality of Rome proposed that the Syndic, the octogenarian Prince Corsini, should accompany it.  It also comprised two ecclesiastics, and thus constituted, it left Rome for Gaeta on the 5th of December.  On the borders of the Neapolitan kingdom its passage was barred by the police, and it was obliged to retrace its steps to Terracina.  Here the deputation drew up a letter to Cardinal Antonelli (no longer the patriotic minister of the spring), in which an audience with the Sovereign Pontiff was respectfully requested.  The answer came that the Pope would not receive the deputation.  It was an answer that he was at liberty to make, but it should have meant abdication.  If, called back by the will of the Parliament of his own making, the Sovereign deigned not even to receive the bearers of the invitation, in what way did he contemplate resuming the throne?  It was only too easy to guess.  The Head of Christendom had become a convert of King Ferdinand of Naples, otherwise Bomba.  By a path strewn with the sinister flowers of war did Pius IX. meditate returning to his subjects—­by that path and no other.

The Galetti-Sterbini ministry, appointed by the Pope under popular pressure a few days before his departure, remained in charge of affairs, somewhat strengthened by the adhesion of Terenzio Mamiani as Minister of Foreign Affairs.  Mamiani at first declined to form part of the ministry, but joined it afterwards with self-sacrificing patriotism, in the hope of saving things from going to complete rack and ruin during the interregnum caused by the withdrawal of the Head of the State.  He only retired from the ungrateful office when he saw the imminence of a radical change in the form of government, which was not desired by him any more than it had been by Rossi.