grant any concession, so long as Rome should not be evacuated. This,
indeed, seemed to be Sanguinetti's definite position; he made a show of
disliking the wavering sway of Leo XIII, and of retaining a fervent
admiration for Pius IX, the great, heroic pope of the days of resistance,
whose goodness of heart had proved no impediment to unshakable firmness.
And all this was equivalent to a promise that he, Sanguinetti, would
again make kindliness exempt from weakness, the rule of the Church, and
would steer clear of the dangerous compounding of politics. At bottom,
however, politics were his only dream, and he had even formulated a
complete programme of intentional vagueness, which his clients and
creatures spread abroad with an air of rapturous mystery. However, since
a previous indisposition of the Pope's, during the spring, he had been
living in mortal disquietude, for it had then been rumoured that the
Jesuits would resign themselves to support Cardinal Pio Boccanera,
although the latter scarcely favoured them. He was rough and stern, no
doubt, and his extreme bigotry might be a source of danger in this
tolerant age; but, on the other hand, was he not a patrician, and would
not his election imply that the papacy would never cease to claim the
temporal power? From that moment Boccanera had been the one man whom
Sanguinetti feared, for he beheld himself despoiled of his prize, and
spent his time in devising plans to rid himself of such a powerful rival,
repeating abominable stories of Cardinal Pio's alleged complaisance with
regard to Benedetta and Dario, and incessantly representing him as
Antichrist, the man of sin, whose reign would consummate the ruin of the
papacy. Finally, to regain the support of the Jesuits, Sanguinetti's last
idea was to repeat through his familiars that for his part he would not
merely maintain the principle of the temporal power intact, but would
even undertake to regain that power. And he had a full plan on the
subject, which folks confided to one another in whispers, a plan which,
in spite of its apparent concessions, would lead to the overwhelming