The emotion at the Vatican was great. Shortly before, when giving Cacault
his final instructions, the First Consul said, "Forget not to treat the
Pope as if he had 200,000 men at his orders." The French minister had
faithfully observed this injunction, which agreed with his personal
opinions: he knew the obstacles which still separated the new master of
France from the Roman Court. The scheme of ecclesiastical organization
proposed by Bonaparte was simple: sixty bishops named by the civil power
and confirmed by the Pope, the clergy salaried by the State, the
ecclesiastical jurisdiction transferred to the Council of State, and the
official management of religious bodies to the temporal authority. Pius
VII. agreed to accept this new condition of the Church exclusively
restored to her spiritual functions. The situation in the Church of the
priests who had taken the oath to the civil constitution of 1789, their
reconciliation to the papacy, the tacit admission of the appropriation by
the State of the ecclesiastical property, the nomination of new bishops
and consequent resignation or deprivation of those already holding the
titles,--such were the various questions which occupied Pope Pius VII. and
his skilful minister Cardinal Consalvi. Cacault tried to persuade them
that the cardinal himself must go to Paris. "Most Holy Father," said the
French minister, "it is necessary that Consalvi himself carry your reply
to Paris. What alarms me most is the character of the First Consul; that
man is never open to persuasion. Believe me, something stronger than cold
reason advises me in this matter: a mere animal instinct some would call
it, but it never deceives. What inconvenience if somehow or other you
appear yourself? You are blamed. What did they say? They wish for a
'Concordat' of religion; we anticipate them and bring it, there it is!"

Pope Pius VII. had long felt for General Bonaparte an attraction caused by
a mixed feeling of alarm and confidence. Alarm reigned in the mind of his