While thus in charge of the diplomatic relations of my government without its recognition, the Department sent out a chaplain, an ex-chaplain of the House of Representatives, who, having served his time in that capacity, was entitled to a vacation in Europe, and came with recommendations to me.  Protestant worship was forbidden within the walls of Rome, but to induce the English Protestants to come to Rome and spend their money there, they were allowed to worship in a sort of warehouse outside the Porta del Popolo.  This was repugnant to our democratic ways, and the new chaplain insisted on having his chapel inside the walls.  So I “put on cheek” and hired in the name of the legation an apartment with a huge reception room close to the Piazza di Spagna, put up the arms of the United States of America, and opened the reception room for public worship as the chapel of the legation,—­the first instance in recorded time of Protestant worship in the Papal city.  The sequel was amusing, for as Sunday was my only holiday, and I always spent it on the Campagna, the chaplain cut me dead for not attending his services and keeping Sunday.

I expected some admonitory allusion to this achievement when next I saw the Pope, but no notice was ever taken of it either by the superior or the lower authorities, and so far as I know the church of my planting flourished as long as the city remained under the Papal rule, but with no more of my watering.  The Pope was, I am persuaded, quite indifferent to it, for, devout and unquestioning believer in his own divine authority as he was, he was not a bigot, and not of a persecuting disposition, but he was only a part of an immense and intricate machine, over the movements of which neither he nor any other Pope could have much control.  He had every possible disposition to be that ideal ruler, a benevolent despot, but even in that little realm the details of government were impossible of control by the most competent head of a government; they were necessarily left to the incompetent, bigoted, and zealous administrators chosen by the secondary chiefs of the departments, all the most conservative of men, with a reverence for the abuses and usages of the old regime.  It was personal government down to the lowest grade of responsibility.  The Pope presided and bore the responsibility of the proceedings, but Antonelli was the real ruler of the States of the Church.

And Antonelli was the very impersonation of unscrupulous and malignant intellect, subtle with all the Italian subtlety, and unscrupulous as any of the brigands from the community in which he had his origin.  He was in those days a cardinal of the order of deacons, and only in his later career a priest, which fact is sometimes made the excuse for his frank and notorious disregard of the rule of chastity, nor did he seem to be concerned that his amours were the common gossip of Rome.  I was one day in his anteroom waiting for an audience when a lady came to visit him, and