The Pope having ordered his guards to be ready, in case the French faction should offer to rise, the Cardinal d’Est was so good as to let me alone.  His Holiness gave me an audience of four hours, condescended to beg my forgiveness for not having acted with more vigour for my liberty; and said, with tears in his eyes:  “God forgive those who delayed to give me timely notice of your imprisonment, and who made us believe that you had been guilty, of an attempt upon the King’s person.  The Sacred College took fire at the news; but the French Ambassador being at liberty, to give out what he chose, because nobody, appeared here on your part to contradict him, Mazarin extinguished it, and half the Sacred College thought you were abandoned by the whole kingdom.”  In short, the Pope was so well disposed to me that he thought of adopting me as his nephew, but he sickened soon after and died.

The conclave chose Cardinal Chigi (who was called Alexander VIII.) for his successor, in whose election I had such a share that when it came to my turn, at the adoration of the cardinals, to kiss his feet, he embraced me, saying, “Signor Cardinal de Retz, ‘ecce opus manuum tuarum’” ("Behold the work of your own hands").  I went home accompanied with one hundred and twenty coaches of gentlemen, who did not doubt that I should govern the Pontificate.

My friends in France, who commonly judge of other nations by their own, imagined that a persecuted cardinal might, nay, ought to live like a private man even at Rome, and advised me not to spend much money, because my revenues in France were all seized, and said that such exemplary modesty would have an admirable effect upon the clergy of Paris.  But Cardinal Chigi talked after another manner:  “When you are reestablished in your see you may live as you please, because you will be in a country where everybody will know what you are or are not able to do.  You are now at Rome, where your enemies say every day that you have lost your credit in France, and you are under a necessity to make it appear that what they say is false.  You are not a hermit, but a cardinal, and a cardinal, too, of the better rank.  At Rome there are many people who love to tread upon men when they are down.  Dear sir, take care you do not fall, and do but consider what a figure you will make in the streets with six vergers attending you; otherwise every pitiful citizen of Paris that meets you will be apt to jostle you, in order to make his court to the Cardinal d’Est.  You ought not to have come to Rome if you had not had resolution and the means to support your dignity.  I presume you do not make it a point of Christian humility to debase yourself.  And let me tell you that I, the poor Cardinal Chigi, who have but 5,000 crowns revenue, and am one of the poorest in the College, and though I am sure to meet nobody in the streets who will be wanting in the respect due to the purple, yet I cannot go to my functions without four coaches in livery to attend me.”