io8 RECOLLECTIONS OF FORTY YEARS. 



" The captain of an American man-of-war, who has 

 visited all the defensive works, has told me that it 

 would require twenty thousand men at the least to 

 take Eome, and after a regular siege. 



u Lord Napier and the captain of the Bulldog, an 

 English war vessel, are of the same opinion." 

 # # # * * 



I learnt that the day after I had appeared before 

 the Council of State the Due d'Harcourt, ambassador 

 to the Pope, who had been called to give evidence, 

 insisted that all diplomatic action would be made im- 

 possible if the conduct adopted in regard to me was to 

 prevail, and that he expressed himself in the most 

 favourable terms towards me, asking how any one 

 could have thought of blaming me for occurrences of 

 which he had been an eye-witness, and of which he 

 was better able than any one else to form an opinion, 

 though he and I were not always agreed. The evi- 

 dence of so competent a witness was of great weight, 

 but there is no reference to it t in the report of the' Coun- 

 cil of State,* to which I made the following reply : - 



" The theory of the infallibility of the instructions 

 given to an agent, inaugurated by the report of the 

 Council of State, upsets all the ideas hitherto current 

 in diplomacy, converts an agent intrusted with a 

 mission into an automaton deprived of all initiative, 



* Note of the Translator. M. de Lesseps does not give the 

 report of the Council of State, though he states (see page 118) 

 that it was adverse to him. 



