taken that they correspond in number to the number of cardinals present, and if any candidate is found to have two-thirds of the votes cast, the election is complete.  If, however, the legal two-thirds are not reached, any voter may change his vote by saying that he accedes to the votes thrown in favor of any other candidate.  This mode of election is called accession, and has often been found successful where the prominence of any candidate was sufficient to make it evident that two or three votes would secure a choice.

Inspiration is another mode of election, not so common as the ballot, but which, whenever any candidate has succeeded in forming a strong party, is not without its advantages.  Several cardinals call out together the name of their candidate, and if many of them agree in calling the same name, the rest are seldom willing to hold out in open opposition to a choice which after all may be made without them:  the successful candidate always being expected to remember those who favored, and seldom known to forget those who opposed his election.

A fourth and last mode, never resorted to except in desperate straits, and when the contest seems interminable, is by delegation:  the power of choice being delegated by the cardinals to one or more of their number, and all solemnly pledging themselves to abide by the decision.  It was thus that Gregory X. was chosen by a delegation of six,—­and that John XXII. became Pope after two years of regular voting had failed to procure a successor to the Prince of the Apostles.  It has been said, however, that John, who, partly by his talents and partly by fraud, had raised himself from the lowest walks of life, had no sooner secured a pledge of concurrence than he announced his own name as that of the candidate of his choice.  Surprised, but not edified, the cardinals made no opposition to his elevation, for Christendom and folio crammed with projects and reports:  bishops and missionaries transport him in a moment from England to China, from Egypt to Peru.  If you could look into those piles of papers which are awaiting his signature, you would find petitions and remonstrances, death-warrants and pardons, political processes and criminal processes, schemes for a new bishopric or a new canonization, plans for a cathedral in New York or a convent in Syria, for a new prison in the Patrimony or a new tax in the Marches, architecture and law, finance and theology, sacred and profane all jumbled together:  and what wonder they should keep jumbled, from the beginning to the end, from his coronation to his funeral, leaving him, even with the best intentions and the most untiring industry, a helpless prey to intrigues and cabals and all the artifices and deceptions which beset a throne?  Gioja and Romagnosi are under the ban, and he has no wish to ask them for the clue to the labyrinth he is wandering in, even if he had the time.  He has no time to read the newspapers.  His knowledge