A Bull of Clement XII., impregnated with the spirit of economy, abolished, together with a number of other offices, the Governorship of the Leonine city. The reforming hand of the age, quickened by the prickings of inexorable penury, has been successfully engaged in paring down the old-fashioned lavishness of even arch-conservative Rome. At present the peace of the Popeless city is left entirely to the care of Monsignor Governatore, who with drilled gendarmes in modern plight has superseded the once rival powers and fantastic archers of the Church's Lieutenant and the civic Bargello,—ruling Rome during an interregnum by the same grim intervention of prowling police that is
to represent the mystical operations of the Holy Ghost. Stendhal, who gives a very capital account of the Conclave in 1829 his Promenades dans Renne, has a good story of his, witnessing some inmate of the Conclave playing in the lottery through the wheel which serves for conveying meals in 'Just as after the inspection of two or three dinners all this kitchen-work bored us,' he writes, 'and we were on the point to withdraw, we saw a ticket come through the turning-wheel from with- in the Conclave, with the numbers 17 and 25 thereon, and the request to put it in the lottery. . . . These numbers might signify that in the morning's balloting the Cardinal occupying apartment 25 had 17 votes, or any other combination. The numbers 'were faithfully handed over to a servant of Cardinal P.'
