The awful word heresy had been heard in connection
with his name, and these were times when such an
accusation could not be disregeurded — when, indeed, any
mere suspicion of a tendency to laxness on any of the
points that were then making the dividing line between
orthodoxy and the tenets of the sectarians would have
been quite sufficient to prevent the greater number of
the assembled cardinals from giving a vote to one labour-
ing imder such an accusation. Curious enough to mark
how far both the accusation and the importance of it
shows the Church to have floated down the stream of
tune during the last hundred years. Fancy anybody
accusing Leo X. or Julius II. of heterodox opinions,
or of his finding anybody to listen to him if he had
done so !

Under these circumstances the leaders of the Impe-
rialist party cast their eyes on Cardinal Pozzi, a mode-
rate man, who was esteemed by all parties, and who,

q2



228 THE PAPAL GOKGLAYES.
being a man of low birth, would not give any cause of
jealousy on that ground to his princely fellow-cardinals.
It seemed as if the election was as good as made ; and so
it probably would have been, had not Cardinal FamesCi
who, as the conclavist remarks, had been accustomed in
so many Conclaves to dictate the law instead of being
dictated to, suddenly taken offence at a decision having
been come to, as he &ncied^ without due reference to
his views on the matter. He immediately went into
the Paoline Chapel, where the French party were as-
sembled, very much out of heart and despairing of pre-
venting the election of Pozzi by their adversaries, and
offered to lend them his aid to elect Cardinal Fano.
