These would seem to be the chief reasons why he braved public opinion in Paris and clung to the Roman connection, bringing forward his plan of a Gallican Church only as a threatening move against the clerical flank.  When the Vatican was obdurate he coquetted with the “constitutional” bishops, allowing them every facility for free speech in a council which they held at Paris at the close of June, 1801.  He summoned to the Tuileries their president, the famous Gregoire, and showed him signal marks of esteem.  “Put not your trust in princes” must soon have been the thought of Gregoire and his colleagues:  for a fortnight later Bonaparte carried through his treaty with Rome and shelved alike the congress and the church of the “constitutionals.”

It would be tedious to detail all the steps in this complex negotiation, but the final proceedings call for some notice.  When the treaty was assuming its final form, Talleyrand, the polite scoffer, the bitter foe of all clerical claims, found it desirable to take the baths at a distant place, and left the threads of the negotiation in the hands of two men who were equally determined to prevent its signature, Maret, Secretary of State, and Hauterive, who afterwards become the official archivist of France.  These men determined to submit to Consalvi a draft of the treaty differing widely from that which had been agreed upon; and that, too, when the official announcement had been made that the treaty was to be signed immediately.  In the last hours the cardinal found himself confronted with unexpected conditions, many of which he had successfully repelled.  Though staggered by this trickery, which compelled him to sign a surrender or to accept an open rupture, Consalvi fought the question over again in a conference that lasted twenty-four hours; he even appeared at the State dinner given on July 14th by the First Consul, who informed him before the other guests that it was a question of “my draft of the treaty or none at all.”  Nothing baffled the patience and tenacity of the Cardinal; and finally, by the good offices of Joseph Bonaparte, the objectionable demands thrust forward at the eleventh hour were removed or altered.

The question has been discussed whether the First Consul was a party to this device.  Theiner asserts that he knew nothing of it:  that it was an official intrigue got up at the last moment by the anti-clericals so as to precipitate a rupture.  In support of this view, he cites letters of Maret and Hauterive as inculpating these men and tending to free Bonaparte from suspicion of complicity.  But the letters cannot be said to dissipate all suspicion.  The First Consul had made this negotiation peculiarly his own:  no officials assuredly would have dared secretly to foist their own version of an important treaty; or, if they did, this act would have been the last of their career.  But Bonaparte did not disgrace them; on the contrary, he continued to honour them with his confidence.  Moreover, the First Consul