But hush! the Pope is speaking,--not always as orators speak, it is
true, but gravely, at least, and with that indefinable air of dignity
which the habit of command seldom fails to impart. The language is
sonorous, and if you have had the good sense to unlearn your barbarous
application of English sounds--cunningly devised by Nature herself to
keep damp fogs and cold winds out of the mouth--to Italian vowels, which
the same judicious mother framed with equal cunning to let soft and
odoriferous airs into it, you will probably understand what he says, for
his speech is generally in Latin, and very good Latin too.[B]

But still you grow tired, and, like the actors in the splendid pageant,
are heartily glad when it is all over,--well pleased to have seen it,
but, unless a sight-seer by nature, equally pleased to feel that you
will never be compelled by your duty to your guide-book and _cicerone_
to see it again.

There are three kinds of consistory,--the private, the public, and the
semi-public. The most interesting are those in which ambassadors are
received, for the ambassador's speech gives some variety to the routine.
But in substance they are all equally splendid, equally formal, and--now
that the world no longer looks to the Vatican for its creeds--all
equally insignificant and dull.

Thus it is not as a deliberative body that the cardinals take part in
the government. Their collective functions are for the most part purely
formal, and the great wheel turns steadily on its axle without any
direct help from them. But as sole electors of the sovereign, whom they
are not only to choose, but to choose from among themselves, and as the
body from which the highest functionaries of the State are drawn, their