Tradition absolutely requires that a new Pope should disgrace the favourite of his predecessor, by way of initiating his Papacy with a stroke of popularity.
Thus every Secretary of State is duly warned that whenever his master takes the road heavenward, he must become lost again in the common herd of the Sacred College.

He feels, therefore, that he ought to make the best possible use of his time.
He has, moreover, the comfortable assurance that after his disgrace, he will not be called upon for any account of his past deeds; for the least of the Cardinals is as inviolable as the twelve Apostles.
Surely, then, he would be a fool to refuse anything while he has the power to take it.
This is the place to sketch, in a few pages, the portraits of the two men,--one of whom possesses, and the other exercises, the dictatorship over three millions of unfortunate beings..