POPE LEO XII. AND HIS VALET GIGI.

Gigi. Coughing and spitting, spitting and on his conscience that a jubilee recantation is coughing, what loving and attentive sons will worth twice as much as a coronation one. you make the whole sacred college! Again? nay threatened him with imprisonment and cutting upon my life, holy father, this sore throat of your his tongue out. "I shall never recant the better Beatitude returns at an awkward season. An for that," said he, "nor make the more converts;" ugly thing at best; and ugliest of all at a jubilee; and then, winking his black almond eye, “Ask though many more will be caught at it than will his Beatitude who brought Serafina Dati to him, be freed. Were I your Holiness, I would excom- when he was made a cardinal." municate that nasty Munich girl.

Gigi. They are not terrified by the death of the goat, your Holiness commanded to be killed for giving it. If they had seen it done they would have been for her little kid ran after the soldier who slew her, sometimes licking his hand, at Leo. I understand you, Gigi . . and without a other times twinkling its ears and rubbing them licence? What an age is this! the most licentious! between its legs, in order to clear itself of the Gigi. Holiness! my master! I have heard it blood that dropped on it from the mother, when reported that the present age is a great deal less it leaped up at her teat, and was driven off. The licentious than any former one since the establishCorsican guard has been called out to repell ment of the Popedom. another of these animals, that was seen crossing Leo. Ay truly, less licentious indeed in buying the Ponte Molle, and, if the male had not accom-licenses.

panied her, it is thought would have succeeded. Gigi. Licentiousness is not the word, I see, but The Swiss, coming up opportunely, acted with great vigour on the occasion: both male and female were surrounded and disabled, and are now before the police.

Gigi. They are in that ward of the hospital which the French made so neat and comfortable. Leo. My commands were that the pilgrims should be seen together in their dormitory, to vassals.

Gigi. But the hundred candied citrons, which the young Granduke sent to your Beatitude, had always been sent as an act of mere courtesy. The custom, I have heard, originated with the Medici, who, according to the quaintness of an emblematic age, I imagine, would represent their armorial bearings of the golden balls by a present of citrons. It was customary for the Holiness of our Lord to write a letter of thanks for the politeness shown to him; your Sanctity did not write it, but ordered a secretary to say simply, "that your Sanctity had received the citrons, and appeared to be contented with them."

Leo. Well, so I was.

vited some of the Christian princes to be present at this solemnity?

Leo. I pressed the youngest, who are the most ductile, and the oldest, who are the most devout: neither age would yield to me.

Gigi. No not a Bourbon !

Leo. The Bourbons are either curds or cream: we may lick up a little of them, but they close upon or slip under any impression we would make. Beside, they are never so pious as when they have eaten a good dinner and are going to sleep. The two Infantes of Spain proposed to attend me, on condition that I would lend them each three thousand dollars: this, by advice of my secreta

Gigi. Next year, if I may prophesy, your Bea- ries of the interior and of the finances, I agreed titude must be contented without 'em.

to do on their arrival at Rome. They replied, that at Madrid they could enforce credit, but that in the provinces the people would rather leave their houses than accommodate them with a sup per or a night's lodging; and that without the

Leo. I suspect as much. The last present I received from Tuscany, by the connivance (I doubt not) of some in power, prepares me for this affront. Gigi. I should have thought the citrons would money they and their mules would perish upon have been the last.

Leo. No; while you were on my business at Orvieto, the Archbishop of Pisa sent me three large salmons and three codfish, the latter only salted, the former both salted and smoked, informing me that, according to the directions he had received with 'em, they should not be opened, nor cut to pieces, nor washed, as it would be injurious to the flavour and would damage the flakes. One of each was served up at my table on the third day of Lent, and my appetite was sharper than usual. Maria-Fabrizio, on applying the knife, fell at my feet and kissed them, and asked me humbly, with his eyes closed, whether it was my pleasure that it should be a miracle or not. I wondered what the man meant. He brought before me the two fishes; a strong smell of turpentine invaded my nostrils; the two dainties | were of pine-wood, a salmon-skin and cod-skin being drawn over them. For this insult, offered to me in the first instance, I understand, by one Ahab Rigworthy of Connecticut, I will forbid the Americans to visit Rome.

Gigi. My dear master, your Beatitude, if an American should ever wish to visit Rome, it would only be to try his wits against the Jews; or to speculate, in case Saint Peter's should come to the hammer, what may be the weight of lead sheeting and brass nails upon the roof, how many iron cramps in the walls, how much lime the pillars and statues would burn into, and what vent he could open for them. I will answer for it, there is more taste for the fine arts, and more knowledge of them, among the galley-slaves in Civita Vecchia, than in the most wealthy citizens of the United Provinces.

Leo. That I know; and I am surprised how they could carve a fish so like nature.

Gigi. An Indian carved it: the Indians both carve and paint: they are the Giottos and Cimabues of the Anglo-Americans. Your Holiness may exclude the new company of the pine-fishery, and not hurt them. But could not you have in

the road. The reflections were so extremely just, so notoriously true, that I had no suspicion of a latent fraud, until one of the faith informed me clandestinely, being in the king's confidence, that his Catholic Majesty had united with his brothers the Infantes in laying a trap for my money, and was, according to the legitimacy of primogeniture, to have above half to his own share. On renewing the negotiations, I proposed to accept a historical piece by Velasquez and another by Vandyk, as my security for the money. They, finding that the sum was below the value of the pictures, and fearing the reward of their perfidy, expressed the utmost sorrow that they could not attend me, assuring me that apprehensions were entertained, from certain symptoms, that they both had caught the gout, by a constant attendance on their be loved king and brother, and that their physicians had strongly recommended that they should continue in their native air, without which not one of the Faculty could answer for the consequences

Gigi. If they were not Infantes of Spain, and brothers of Ferdinand the Seventh, one might call them the greatest liars and scoundrels upon earth. Your Holiness would then really have accommodated them, after the first proof-impres sion of their moral features.

Leo. There is nothing I should not rejoice to do for a Bourbon, unless it be to take his bill of exchange or his word. In other respects hardly one in the family would deceive you.

The two Infantes declare to me, that they would have come into Italy some time ago, while they had in their pockets some of the money they received for promising the pardon of sundry negros, but that they could not find in their hearts the resolution to leave behind them so fine a sight as that of Francesco della Torre, who had just been sentenced, as an acquaintance of Riego, to carry round his neck the portrait of that traga-perro to the place of execution, and there to behold it burnt by the hangman.

Gigi. His wife, I read in the gazette, is sen

tenced to the galleys for ten years, as being her husband's accomplice.* I wish some lawyer could explain to me how this is. Accomplice in what? If she were not the accomplice of her husband, she would sin against Holy Church. If she refused to receive and entertain his acquaintance... Leo. She might receive and entertain them such was her duty: but she ought also to denounce them, together with the husband, before the police or the confessor.

Gigi. Ay, ay! now I understand the meaning of reception and entertainment. Without such explanations, from time to time, we should forget | our duties and become heretics.

Curse this pin upon my shirt! I needed not to have crossed myself, fool as I was, in talking about these hell-fagots. By Bacchus, it has drawn blood ! Would no prince or princess of Portugal step forward, and lend a hand at the suds?

rooms: show them a scaffold with one (lately) crowned head upon it, and the bass-viol stands alone in the orchestra.

Leo. This is as it should be, as it always was, and, by the blessing of our Lady, always shall be. I declare to you, Gigi, I am no liberal, doubt me as they may; and that I proposed a constitution, on the firm conviction that, without it, the royal authority can never reach its utmost height in safety.

Gigi. Yet your Beatitude stands alone.

Leo. I am the ruler of kings, the vicegerent of God; I read no other name in his commission. Gigi. Master, my Holiness, let me look at it. Leo. Gigi, Gigi! thine are eyes of the flesh. Gigi. They can read commissions.

Leo. Not such as ours are.

Gigi. There is nothing that your Beatitude can not see and do: yet I now recollect what I heard the other day: which is, that you and the monarchs your friends and allies, striving to throw back the world upon the remains of Chaos in the bosom of Vacuity, are like the little figures round Greek vases, which strain at one thing and stand in one place for ages, and have no more to do in the supporting or moving of the vases than the worms have.

Leo. This language is not yours, is not an Italian's, is not a continental's: it breathes the bluff air of England. If I had the speaker here, I would cast him into a dungeon.

Gigi. O for God's sake, your Holiness, do not think of it! The first boat's crew that landed upon the coast would lay Rome in ashes.

Leo. I would remove the money and snuff from the custom-house; and the heretics could not keep possession of the country; no, not if there were a hundred of 'em.

Leo. Prince Michael would perhaps have favoured me with his presence, if it had not been required at Paris, whither he is gone in order to protect his country from the horrors of a constitution, after valiantly fighting against his father, in defence of legitimacy, under the commands of the Holy Alliance. My regard for the House of Braganza is little less than for the Capets; and I myself advised the king to delay no longer the wishes of his people, and proposed two constitutions. The first and preferable consisted of one estate, namely the king, but subject to the advice of his privy council, removable by him at pleasure, with the sole exception of the archbishop of the realm, perpetual president thereof. The second was of four estates; the king, the clergy, the nobility, the populace. The king, as in other free countries, should at his option lay down or reject any law; and every one should originate with him, excepting the ecclesiastical, which are written Gigi. Alas! sir, a hundred of them would hold in heaven from the beginning, and are thence all Italy against the devil. On their landing, the delivered down to me, and from me to the faith-carbonari would not want fuel: there is nowhere ful, as occasion may require. The taxes were to a hill from Como to Taranto that would not have be decreed by the king, the clergy, and the no- a fire upon it. The old Bucentaur would be alert bility; and their impartiality was certain and un- as Argo. Every soul that is not cowled and casavoidable, since they were not parties concerned. A more extensive power was left to the populace; namely, that of paying them. This plan however was considered as affording a bad example; and I was called a liberal at the court of Vienna. Leo. Gigi, it is high time to put down these Hence I was afraid of pressing more urgently a bad humours, when they prevail in ninety-nine prince or princess of Portugal, lest I should be out of a hundred; and yet the princes would not suspected of an inclination to shake the conti- give ear unto me, nor come to my jubilee. A fat nental system, which has been declared by all the boar, weltering in his blood, squeezed an avesovrans the same for the whole body of them, maria from my late son of Naples. My late son whatever game they may be playing, in one of France thought of Christ and Paradise after a chamber or two chambers, for the amusement of salmi of ten woodcocks, and would then tell M. their idle and unthinking vassals. Constitution- | Blacas, the Gascon, to feel his heart, how it was houses and card-built houses serve the same purpose, and are erected on the same foundations.

Gigi. Kings sympathise with kings, not with nations. A field of battle, strown with twenty thousand slain, is only a ticket to their ball

* These are facts.

socked, and two-thirds of these, would make swords out of soup-ladles, encrusted with boiling-hot menestra, and bayonets out of spits, though the roast were still in the centre of 'em, phizzing.

beating for the service of the faith. My son of Modena is never so devout as when he thanks the Lord in his merey, after having taken up and imprisoned a carbonaro, who had lost a brother and who himself had bled in fighting for the restoration of his most Serene Highness. Other princes boast that they have larger armies in pro

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Gigi. God forbid! He has not the heart to hold out a single flask of oil toward it. When his wife learned English, he came every day into the room and caught the lessons by stealth, paying only for one scholar, and that meanly. He and his heir apparent have the two poorest purses, in their way, of any two gentlemen living. Were I your Holiness, I would dally with his doubts, until my successor should have the cost of his baptism or I would demand half a dozen pieces of brass cannon from him, apprehensive that the payment of such a sum in coined money would break his heart at the font. I myself would not undertake to teach him his catechism, until I had made him count out upon this palm three dollars of his Majesty's, trying them with my nail whether they were all unclipt. Otherwise I might be disappointed, as your Holiness is.

portion to the extent of their territory than they : |jections following the most fanciful recommendamy son of Modena boasts that he has imprisoned, tions (some very pressing and some very fondor denounced to the emperor for imprisonment, ling) of his sinful soul, to the Virgin and her more suspected subjects than all the heretical crucified Son. After which, M. Tatterel heard kings on the whole Continent, although he of the scourge; but it sounded like the ripple of Prussia is a half-catholic in this heroism. He in lake Agnano on the softest of its sands;* and he his vigilance keeps up such a well-directed fire applied a stout leather, which he had taken against the philosophical and learned, both within down on purpose from behind his carriage, to the his dominions and without, that I suspect in shoulders of the Hibernian supplicant. At first another year I shall have to illuminate Saint O'Gorman thought it was the devil who did it, Peter's for him, as a convert to the truth. and cried, "O Christ save me! Lord have mercy upon me!" A laugh ill suppressed, and another smart stroke across the shoulders, undeceived him, and, starting from his liturgical trance, he exclaimed indignantly, "Damn your blood! what are you at?" Seizing at the same moment the offender, he held him, and blasted him every now and then with flashes of oaths, while he repeated the remainder of the litany and lauds. I was not very near, and could only catch a few of his fulminations, as the priests were chanting Dominus vobiscum; et cum spiritu tuo: and Oremus. These words, your Holiness may remember, are so long in chanting, that Signor Emmanuel would not let slip so fair and tempting an opportunity of pouring out his choler and comminations. Nor did he suffer the irreligious assailant to escape from his grasp, either in the confusion of the service or at the close of it. At the door he recognised the features of M. Tatterel, who whether from apprehension or from decorum had been silent and hid his face, and there Signor Emmanuel challenged him to pistols the next morning. Some of the young Irish, who were present, told of the abomination, and by order of the police, M. Tatterel, having first been fined three hundred crowns, is sent away from the Roman states. M. Emmanuel-Roger O'Gorman has been persuaded by father Matthew-Roderick to forego his vengeance, as likely to become a stumblingblock and a scandal. "Why, father Matthew Roderick, be easy and contented now," said Signor Emmanuel-Roger. "In my own country I must take notice of him, as you know, or there's no living; but I do faithfully swear and promise, as a Christian and man of honour, to let him alone while I am in the Holy City, and the mean fellow keeps his distance." The good father praised his resolution, and was quite satisfied, saying, in the voice of an angel," If all Christians did so!"

Leo. The money spent in the city by strangers, throughout the whole time of the jubilee, will not pay for the three conversions, although the Jew should grow reasonable; and people are so little occupied or concerned in it, that the affair of the Englishman and Irishman, on Ash Wednesday, has excited a good deal of idle conversation, I hear. Do you know the particulars, Gigi? I am afraid they have been misrepresented to me; for although this is the seat of Sanctity, it is not invariably the seat of Truth.

Gigi. If it is, her rump has left no mark on the cushion. The story, as I heard it, is this. An Irishman, of somewhat loose habits, had declared his intention to father Matthew-Roderick O'Rian, of scourging himself in the church among the penitents. Another acquaintance of father Matthew-Roderick said jocosely, "What will our friend Emmanuel-Roger O'Gorman do? If he lays whip to his body, it must have been knotted by some fair hand; and no hair will touch his skin but what he knows how to smoothen." "Sir," replied father O'Rian, "though Mr. O'Gorman loves wine and women, and quarrels and swears occasionally, he is an excellent Christian at bottom, and has declared to me his intention to scourge himself."

Scioppius would have given the pious Irishman a capital piece of information, if he had ever read the Infamia Famiani.

"Flagellum ego in monasterio Laurentiano manibustracRomæ tamen quotannis quinctâ majoris hebdomadæ feria tavi, et Caroli V sanguine (ut aiebant) adhuc oblitum vidi. complures inveniuntur, flagriones et plagipatidæ, sive plagigera hominum genera, ut Plautus loquitur, qui tribus solis denariis conduci possunt, ut in supplicatione publica

seu processione, longe fortiores Carolo viros se præbeant in

On this, M. Tatterel, the Englishman, watched and followed his friend O'Gorman through the crowd, and contrived to place himself just behind him in the church. The candles being extinPerhaps he would have been of opinion that in the year guished, he heard distinctly the sobs of O'Gor- of jubilee one is bound to scourge himself, although in other man, for none sobbed louder, and guttural inter-years this duty, like all the rest, is vicarious.

tergo flagris concidendo," &c. p. 18.