Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/161

 Rh permission to lay hands on the Cardinal; and he was accordingly arrested and lodged in St. Angelo. Here he still sat, when the Pope came hack and instructed his Secretary of State, Pacca, to take the necessary steps to proceed criminally against the seditious Cardinal. For this purpose a special Congregation was appointed, and began to investigate the case, when suddenly the proceedings dropped by sovereign injunction, and the prisoner left the castle restored to all the privileges of his rank, and admitted to take part in those consistorial and other duties from which he had before been steadily excluded. He died in 1817—that is, before another Conclave.

With such precedents, it might have been