You see that your soldiers of 1858 are angels in comparison with our soudards of the monarchy.  If, with all this, you still find them, not absolutely perfect, try the French recipe:  submit all your citizens to a conscription, in order that your regiments may not be composed of the refuse of the nation, Create—­”

“Stop!” cried the prelate.

“Monsignore?”

“I stopped you short, my son, because T perceive that you are getting beyond the real and the possible. Primo, we have no citizens; we have subjects. Secundo, the conscription is a revolutionary measure, which we will not adopt at any price; it consecrates a principle of equality as much opposed to the ideas of the Government as to the habits of the country.  It might possibly give us a very good army, but that army would belong to the nation, not to the Sovereign.  We will at once put away, if you please, this dangerous utopia.”

“It might gain you some popularity.”

“Far from it.  Believe me, the subjects of the Holy Father have a deep antipathy to the principle of the conscription.  The discontent of La Vendee and Brittany is nothing to that which it would create here.”

“People become accustomed to everything, Monsignore.  I have met contingents from La Vendee and Brittany singing merrily as they went to join their corps.”

“So much the better for them.  But let me tell you the only grievance of this country against the French rule is the conscription, which the Emperor had established among us.”

“So you negative my proposal of the conscription.”

“Absolutely!”

“I must think no more about it?”

“Quite out of the question.”

“Well, Monsignore, I’ll do without it.  Let us have recourse to the system of voluntary enlistment, but with the condition that you secure the prospects of the soldier.  What bounty do you offer to recruits?”

“Twelve scudi; but for the future we mean to go as high as twenty.”

“Twenty scudi is fair enough; still I’m afraid even at one hundred and seven francs a head you won’t get picked men.  Now, you will allow, Monsignore, a peasant must be badly off indeed when a bounty of twenty scudi tempts him to put on a uniform which is universally despised?  But if you want to attract more recruits round every barrack than there were suitors at Penelope’s gate, endow the army, offer the Roman citizens—­pardon me, I mean the Pope’s subjects—­such a bounty as is really likely to tempt them.  Pay them down a small sum for the assistance of their families, and keep the balance till their period of service has expired.  Induce them to re-engage after their discharge by promises honourably and faithfully observed; arrange that with every additional year of service the savings which the soldier has left in the hands of the state shall increase.  Believe me, when the Romans know that a soldier,