Page:On papal conclaves (IA a549801700cartuoft).djvu/58

 gulations of the Court of Rome, the more will one he impressed by the fact, how, athwart all the dense accumulation of punctilious formalism which has been the aggregate deposit of a current setting in the same direction for centuries, there is yet preserved a cunning element of subtle elasticity that has been shrewdly cherished in secret against the event of the force of altered circumstances, making it some way desirable to seek protection in what has been so jealously suppressed and scouted in ordinary times— liberty of individual initiative.

Now-a-days Rome wears during an interregnum no great outer look of change—all going on pretty much in the same steady order as before. But formerly the case was very different. 'Let not him say that he has been in Rome who has not happened to be there during the vacation of the See,' are the words of a contemporary who wrote a narrative of the Conclave which, in 1621, resulted in the election of Gregory XV. Down to comparatively a quite recent date entry upon an interregnum was synonymous