even amidst the ruin of its temporal authority, and were slowly but surely winning back the ground lost in the Revolution.  An influence so impalpable yet irresistible, that inherited from the Rome of the Caesars the gift of organization and the power of maintaining discipline, in which the Revolution was so signally lacking, might well be the ally of the man who now dominated the Latin peoples.  The pupil of Caesar could certainly not neglect the aid of the spiritual hierarchy, which was all that remained of the old Roman grandeur.

Added to this was his keen instinct for reality, which led him to scorn such whipped-up creeds as Robespierre’s Supreme Being and that amazing hybrid, Theophilanthropy, offspring of the Goddess of Reason and La Reveilliere-Lepeaux.  Having watched their manufacture, rise and fall, he felt the more regard for the faith of his youth, which satisfied one of the most imperious needs of his nature, a craving for certainty.  Witness this crushing retort to M. Mathieu:  “What is your Theophilanthropy?  Oh, don’t talk to me of a religion which only takes me for this life, without telling me whence I come or whither I go.”  Of course, this does not prove the reality of Napoleon’s religion; but it shows that he was not devoid of the religious instinct.

The victory of Marengo enabled Bonaparte to proceed with his plans for an accommodation with the Vatican; and he informed one of the Lombard bishops that he desired to open friendly relations with Pope Pius VII., who was then about to make his entry into Rome.  There he received the protection of the First Consul, and soon recovered his sovereignty over his States, excepting the Legations.

The negotiations between Paris and the Vatican were transacted chiefly by a very able priest, Bernier by name, who had gained the First Consul’s confidence during the pacification of Brittany, and now urged on the envoys of Rome the need of deferring to all that was reasonable in the French demands.  The negotiators for the Vatican were Cardinals Consalvi and Caprara, and Monseigneur Spina—­able ecclesiastics, who were fitted to maintain clerical claims with that mixture of suppleness and firmness which had so often baffled the force and craft of mighty potentates.  The first difficulty arose on the question of the resignation of bishops of the Gallican Church:  Bonaparte demanded that, whether orthodox or constitutionals, they must resign their sees into the Pope’s hands; failing that, they must be deposed by the papal authority.  Sweeping as this proposal seemed, Bonaparte claimed that bishops of both sides must resign, in order that a satisfactory selection might be made.  Still more imperious was the need that the Church should renounce all claim to her confiscated domains.  All classes of the community, so urged Bonaparte, had made immense sacrifices during the Revolution; and now that peasants were settled on these once clerical lands, the foundations of society would be broken up by any attempt to dispossess them.