Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/19

 ancestral Cardinal was actuated with the feeling of a principal, and operated, not through the agency of a surviving instru- ment, but as much as possible through the impalpable element of colloquy and personal persuasion. To preserve tracings of such proceedings it required that a watchful looker-on should be in the position to take notes, which the chief actors had no interest in perpetuating. This is precisely what was done by the confidential agents whom each Italian sovereign kept about a Conclave. These agents were not mere newsmongers, ministering to a morbid craving for gossip in their reports; they were the selected secret instruments set craftily in motion to effect the election of pet candidates by the ever-scheming individuals who ruled the various principalities of Italy, passing their lives in one perpetual exertion to supplant each other, to smite each other on the hip, and for whom to compass the elevation to the Papal See of a particular individual, at whose hands they had reason to expect per- sonal advantage, was always a capital object of statesmanship. In the despatches of these agents to their employers can one alone expect to find a revelation of the crafty