likely to secure suffrages, but who proved, precisely for this reason, in the critical moment, no trustworthy supporter of the strictly personal views of the Lambruschini party. There was also Cardinal Micara, the Capuchin, who occupied an anomalous position, which made him influential. He was a man like Sixtus V., energetic, hasty, and even violent in his temper; so that at Frascati, where he was Bishop, he once forgot himself so far as to strike in the face a man he was conversing with on the square, from whom he fancied himself to have received a slight. Cardinal Micara was an oddity, and an object of terror to his colleagues, but a man of the people; a true Capuchin of the homely type in his habits—great in charities and familiar with the poor: he was so popular, in spite of his known narrowness of ideas and truculent temper, that the populace cheered him as Pope-elect in the streets of Rome. A different stamp of man was Cardinal Altieri, who, it was believed, aimed at the Secretaryship of State, and intrigued to secure that office against the votes of himself and a few hangers-on. When the Cardinals, therefore—fifty in number,—began
