This government combined in itself all the weakness of anarchy, and all the vices of despotism.

It had produced its inevitable result, the servitude of the state, the poverty of the government and the misery of the population; Rome was no longer anything but the great Catholic municipality, and her government nought save a republic of diplomatists.

Rome possessed a temple enriched with the offerings of the Christian world, a sovereign and ambassadors, but neither population, treasure, nor army.

It was the venerated shadow of that universal monarchy to which the popes had pretended in the golden age of Catholicism, and of which they had only preserved the capital and the court.
VII.
Venice drew near its fall, but the silence and mystery of its government concealed even from the Venetians the decrepitude of the state.

The government was an aristocratic sovereignty, founded on the corruption of the people and treachery, for the master sinew of the government was _espionage_; its _prestige_, mystery; its power, the torture.