The colors of the canopies are similar.  On each table are printed registers prepared for registering the votes at each scrutiny, the schedules for giving the votes, the means for sealing, etc.  On the front of each table is inscribed the name of the cardinal who is to occupy it, together with his armorial bearings.  In the midst of the body of the chapel are six little tables covered with green cloth, with a seat at each of them for the use of any cardinal who may fear that his neighbor might overlook him while writing his voting paper if he wrote it on the table before his throne.  In front of the altar there is a large table covered with crimson silk, on which are folded schedules, wafers, sealing-wax; four candles, not lighted, but ready for use; a tinder-box with steel and matches; scarlet and purple twine for filing the voting schedules; a box of needles for the same purpose; a tablet with seventy holes in it, answering to the number of cardinals if the college were full, and in each hole a little wooden counter with the name of a cardinal, so that there are as many counters as cardinals in the college; and finally, a copy of the form of oath respecting the putting the schedules into the urns, the two urns themselves, and a box with a key, used for receiving the voting papers of such cardinals as may be too ill to leave their cells.  The two urns, however, at the time of the scrutiny are placed on the altar.  Behind the altar there is placed a little iron brazier or stove, in which, after every scrutiny which does not succeed in electing a pope, the voting papers are burned, together with some damp straw, the object being to cause a dense smoke, which, passing by a pipe outside the building, serves to inform the Romans that no election has yet been made.  Twice a day, at about the same hour every day till the election is achieved, this smoke, which is eagerly watched for by all Rome, and specially by the commandant of the Castle of St. Angleo, who is waiting to fire a salute for the new pope, tells the city that there is no pope yet.  When the hour passes and no smoke is seen, it is known that the election is made, and the cannoneers fire away without waiting to know whom they are saluting.

There is no portion of the day or of the lives of the cardinals in conclave which is not regulated by a host of minute regulations and ceremonies.  The introduction of the food supplied to them; the form of bringing it from their palaces; the method of communication with the outside world, and the precautions taken to prevent any communication with reference to the great business in hand; the form and color of the garments to be worn by their Eminences and by all the subordinates; the amount of remuneration and perquisites to be received by the latter (among which regulations I find the following:  “Let no man receive anything who has not purchased the office he holds"); the order of precedence of everybody, from the dean of the Sacred College to the last sweeper who enters the conclave with their Eminences,—­all subject to minute rules, which would require, one would imagine, a lifetime to make one’s self master of, and which, curious as some of them are, it is impossible to find place for here.  We must get on to the method of voting.