A fourth and last mode, never resorted to except in desperate straits,
and when the contest seems interminable, is by _delegation_: the power
of choice being delegated by the cardinals to one or more of their
number, and all solemnly pledging themselves to abide by the decision.
It was thus that Gregory X. was chosen by a delegation of six,--and that
John XXII. became Pope after two years of regular voting had failed to
procure a successor to the Prince of the Apostles. It has been said,
however, that John, who, partly by his talents and partly by fraud, had
raised himself from the lowest walks of life, had no sooner secured a
pledge of concurrence than he announced his own name as that of the
candidate of his choice. Surprised, but not edified, the cardinals made
no opposition to his elevation, for Christendom and folio crammed with
projects and reports: bishops and missionaries transport him in a moment
from England to China, from Egypt to Peru. If you could look into those
piles of papers which are awaiting his signature, you would find
petitions and remonstrances, death-warrants and pardons, political
processes and criminal processes, schemes for a new bishopric or a new
canonization, plans for a cathedral in New York or a convent in Syria,
for a new prison in the Patrimony or a new tax in the Marches,
architecture and law, finance and theology, sacred and profane all
jumbled together: and what wonder they should keep jumbled, from the
beginning to the end, from his coronation to his funeral, leaving him,
even with the best intentions and the most untiring industry, a helpless
prey to intrigues and cabals and all the artifices and deceptions which
beset a throne? Gioja and Romagnosi are under the ban, and he has no
wish to ask them for the clue to the labyrinth he is wandering in, even
if he had the time. He has no time to read the newspapers. His knowledge
of them is derived from abstracts prepared for him by a clerk in the
Governor's office,--containing, therefore, what the minister allows to
be put there, and nothing more; while their living pictures, those