Before touching on this part of the subject, however, it is necessary first to give in as few words as possible some intelligible account of the formal regulations and method of holding the conclave and electing the pontiff.  All the regulations, which have been made with extreme minuteness, together with the subsequent modifications of them by different pontiffs, would occupy far too much space to be given here.  The following rules seem to be the essential points.  Ten days, including that of the pope’s death, are to be allowed for the coming of absent cardinals.  This delay may, however, be dispensed with for urgent reasons.  The conclave should properly be held in the building in which the pope died.  Regulations of various degrees of rigor have been made for securing the isolation of the members of the Sacred College, greater latitude and indulgence having been permitted as we approach modern times.  Sundry means also were devised for hastening the deliberations of their Eminences.  The old rule of Gregory X. prescribed that if an election were not made in three days, the cardinals should be supplied during the following five days with one dish only at dinner and one at supper; and if at the end of those five days the election was still uncompleted, the electors should be allowed only bread and water till they had accomplished their task.  But, as may be readily supposed, all this has been materially modified.  Many of the minute and rigorous precautions for preventing communication with the world outside the conclave have also fallen into desuetude.  The purpose of these, however—­that is, the absolute prevention of any possibility of consultation between those in conclave and those outside—­is still sought to be, and probably is, maintained.  Cardinals obliged to leave the conclave by ill-health, on sworn certificates of the two physicians who are shut up with them in conclave, may return to it, if able to do so, before the election is made.  No censure or excommunication or deposition of any cardinal by the pope whose successor is to be elected can avail to deprive such cardinal of the right to take part in the conclave and in the election.  No cardinal under pain of excommunication may say anything, or promise anything, or request anything, to or from another cardinal for the purpose of influencing him in the giving of his vote.  It may safely be asserted, however, that pretty much all that is done in the conclave from the beginning to the end of it is one long contravention of this rule.  The whole—­at all events, the main—­occupation of those in conclave consists of exactly what is here forbidden.  The rule proceeds to declare that all such bargains, agreements and obligations, even sworn to, are ipso facto void, and “he who does not keep them merits praise rather than the blame of perjury.”  This merit elected popes have usually been found to strive after with all their strength.  Julius II., by a bull issued in 1505, declared that any pope