The rain had been long in its coming, it appears.  But my first impression of Rome was not a very inspiring one.  And, indeed, I had little opportunity of getting any others.

To mark the fact that I had come to the city solely on the Pope’s account, I only stayed two days, so that I saw nothing except the Pope himself, or I rushed by everything else I was shown so hurriedly, that it came to the same thing.  During those forty-eight hours I was the sole property of our embassy, and I could not have been in better hands.  We had representatives who were worthy of the name, in those days,—­real diplomats.

The ambassador was M. Rossi, my former teacher, a man of generous feeling and high intelligence, who was soon to be the victim of one of the most cowardly crimes ever perpetrated by the revolutionary tribe.  The secretary to the embassy was the present Due de Broglie.  By these two gentlemen I was conducted into the Pope’s presence.  Being very ignorant of the proper ceremonial to follow, I asked M. Rossi what I was to call his Holiness.

“Tres chaint Pere, ou cha Chaintete,” he answered, with an accent which I took good care not to imitate.

Having gone past the fine Swiss Guard, in their sixteenth-century dress, and their officer in helmet and cuirass, and then past the Guardia Nobile, and a huge staff of ecclesiastics in violet robes, I bent low before the sovereign pontiff, and kissed his ring with deep emotion.  Raising my eyes, I saw a handsome old man, tall in stature, with a kind face, dressed all in white, to whom I delivered the message of which I was the bearer.  At that moment I had a glimpse of a fair dream, which M. Rossi endeavoured to realise at a later date.  It was to make a close alliance between France and a Confederation of all the Italian States—­ our allies already by relationship between the reigning families, or by community of interest of all kinds—­under the protectorate of the Pope, at once our devoted friend and the head of the Catholic religion all over the whole world.  But the fair dream was never to come true.  Its patriotic promoter, M. Rossi, fell under the assassin’s hand, and every passion—­revolutionary, anti-religious, and anti-French—­joined hands to make it fail.  In its place we have Italian unity and a dethroned Pope.

After a pleasant evening at the embassy, with Cardinal Gizzi, Monsignore de Falloux, the Princes and Princesses of the Massimo family, and a very charming young lady, Princess Rospigliosi, sister to a naval cadet attached to my staff, named Champagny, who afterwards became the Due de Cadore, I returned to Naples by the Pontine Marshes and Terracina, where the strains of Auber’s Fra Diavolo kept springing to my lips.