"Consequently,çoisRené monseigneur, I charge you, by virtue of my full powers as His Most Christian Majesty's Ambassador, and taking all the responsibility upon myself alone, to give the exclusion to M. le Cardinal Albani, if, on the one hand, by a fortuitous juncture, or, on the other, by a secret combination, he should come to obtain the majority of the suffrages.
This letter of exclusion, entrusted to a cardinal by an ambassador who is not formally authorized to that effect, is a piece of diplomatic temerity: it is enough to send a shudder through all stay-at-home statesmen, all the heads of departments, all the chief clerks, all the copiers at the Foreign Office; but, as the Minister knew so little about his business as not even to think of an eventual case of exclusion, needs must that I should think of it for him. Suppose that Albani had been made Pope by accident: what would have become of me? I should have been ruined for ever as a politician.
I say this, not for myself, who care little for a politician's fame, but for the future generation of writers who would be browbeaten because of my accident and who would expiate my misfortune at the cost of their career, even as the whipping-boy is punished when M. le Dauphin commits a blunder. But neither should my daring foresight, in taking the letter of exclusion upon myself, be too much admired: that which appears enormous, when measured by the stunted scale of the old diplomatic ideas, is really nothing at all, in the actual order of society. I owed my audacity on the one hand to my insensibility to all disgrace, on the other to my knowledge of contemporary opinion: the world as it is to-day does not care two sous for the nomination of a pope, the rivalries of crowns, or the internal intrigues of a conclave.
"I have the honour to-day to send you the important documents which I promised you. These are nothing less than the secret and official journal of the Conclave. It is translated, word for word, from the Italian original; I have only removed any part of it which might point too precisely to the sources whence I drew it. If the smallest atom of these perhaps unexampled revelations were to transpire, it would cost the fortune, the liberty and perhaps the lives of several persons. This would be the more deplorable inasmuch as we owe these revelations not to interest and corruption, but to confidence in French honour. This document, monsieur le comte, must therefore remain for ever secret after it has been read in the King's Council; for, in spite of the precautions which I have taken to keep names silent and to suppress direct references, it still says enough to compromise its authors. I have added a commentary, to facilitate its perusal. The Pontifical Government is in the habit of keeping a register on which its decisions, its acts and deeds are noted down day by day, and so to speak hour by hour: what an historical treasure, if one could delve into it, going back towards the earlier centuries of the Papacy! I have been given a momentary glimpse of it, for the present period. The King will see, through the documents which I am sending you, what has never been seen before, the inside of a Conclave; the most intimate sentiments of the Court of Rome will be known to him, and His Majesty's Ministers will not be walking in the dark.