Giovanni Angelo, however, must have well seconded his fortune by his own merit. He is found constantly employed in the government of the different cities of the ecclesiastical States, and everywhere winning golden opinions by his prudence, ability, and the goodness of his disposition. Paul IV. alone could not endure him; and it is intelligible enough that the contrasted nature of the two men must have made them antipathetic to each other; and when Caraffa mounted the throne, his destined successor deemed it prudent to absent himself from Rome. He lived at Milan or at the baths near Pisa, in both which places he beguiled his exile with literary occupations, and in the employment of his means in works of beneficence on a scale which, in either place, obtained for him the title of "father of the poor!"

Such was the man who followed the terrible Caraffa in the Papal throne. But the striking contrast between the two men was completed even in their personal appearance. "Picture to yourself," says Ranke, drawing as usual from the Venetian ambassador, "an old man of extreme corpulence, but so active withal that he arrives at his country villa before the dawn of day. Serene of countenance, bright of eye, conversation, the pleasures of conviviality, and witty discourse are his favourite recreations. As soon as ever he is recovered from a dangerous illness we find him on horseback, and out at the favourite house which he had occupied when a cardinal, briskly running up and down the stairs as he chuckled to himself, 'No, no, no, we are not going to die yet!' He was as easy, as simple in his manner, as

affable, as accessible to all, as his predecessor had been the reverse of all this. And although the sentence of death passed by him on the infamous nephews of Paul IV., whom their uncle himself had been forced to drive from Rome and to deprive of all employment, showed that he could be severe when his duty required it, he was to the utmost of his power kind and indulgent to all. He hated the Inquisition, blamed the monkish narrowness and hardness of its proceedings, and very rarely attended any of its sittings. But he did not dare'* to attack it! He used to say that he understood nothing about it; that he could not call himself a theologian; and in fact he left it with all the power that Paul IV. had attributed to it."

It would not be easy to conceive a more striking testimony to the change that had come over the spirit of the times, than that statement that the Pope, little as he liked it, dared not to stretch out his hand against the ark of the Inquisition! The Church had become once again a Church militant. Wicliff, Luther, and the consequences of their work had done the Church this altogether inestimable service. The days of struggle, of competition, had come back again with all their purifying, animating, arousing properties. Therefore it was that easy-going, jovial-tempered Pius IV. dared not move a finger against the Inquisition; and therefore that, though his natural temper and disposition would have tended to make of him a second, more kindlytempered, more refined, more conscientious Leo X., it was still, as the Venetian ambassador tells us, "the

These are the words of Ranke.

inmost and dearest thought and desire of his heart to exert all his power for the good of the Church;" therefore he "hopes, by the grace of God, to accomplish some good in the world."

The election of the Cardinal Medici, however, as Pius IV. was, as that of his predecessor may be said to have been, a pis aller, resulting from the same difficulties as those which had perplexed the former Conclave but a few days previously, arising from the opposing interests of the Imperialists and the French parties. Of course these were complicated by a host of personal sympathies and antipathies, and were further intensified by the newly arisen necessity of thinking also of the fitness of the man chosen for the duties to be entrusted to him.

It was soon seen that the Conclave was, under these circumstances, likely to be a long one. And "you must know," writes the conclavist who has left us a narrative of this Conclave, "that it is customary in the Conclave, when it is clearly seen that the election will be a long business, for the cardinals to give each other a good number of votes, not with any intention of arriving at a real election, but merely as a complimentary distinction, and a means of showing to the outside world that the persons so honoured were held in consideration by their colleagues." It thus came to pass that the Cardinal di Cueva, who was a man of pleasing manners

It will be observed, that the conclavist who writes this contemplates the number of the votes given in each abortive attempt at an election being perfectly well known as a matter of course outside, despite the burning of the voting papers and the sworn secrecy of the Conclave.

and popular in the College, though very far from possessing any such qualities as would fit him for being made Pope, sent his conclavist, Fernando di Torres, to ask sundry cardinals, both of the Imperial and the French party, to pay him this compliment. But Torres did his work so well and zealously, going round to each of the cardinals privately in his cell, that he obtained the promises of a number of votes sufficient to make the election, while each of those who had promised him theirs did so in the firm persuasion that nobody had the slightest idea of electing Cueva, or that there was the remotest chance of such a result. It was, however, the merest chance that prevented such a result from having been realised! On going into the chapel for the scrutiny, the Cardinal Capo di Ferro in an otiose sort of manner asked those who chanced to be next to him for whom they were going to vote, which he would by no means have done if it had not been perfectly well understood on all sides that the business in hand was not serious, but merely a formal and complimentary voting. "Oh! I am going to vote for Cueva!" said the man asked. "So am I!" said the man on the other side of Capo di Ferro! "Per Bacco! And so am I!" cried Capo di Ferro. And a sudden suspicion darted into the minds of all three, that if they did not mind what they were about, that might happen which so very nearly had happened! The three cardinals, whose chance communication had thus saved the College from doing what it had not the smallest intention of doing, instantly destroyed the voting papers they had prepared and made new ones, openly declaring their reasons for

doing so amid the general laughter of the assembly, in which his Eminence Cardinal Cueva heartily joined !

"Many other kinds of tricks were tried," says the conclavist, some of which being in connection with candidates qualified to aspire in earnest to the Papacy were much praised, and carefully recorded of the authors of them. Such was the plot of some of the leaders of the French party with a view to the election of Cardinal Tournon, a man, says the conclavist, very worthy of being elected by reason of his exemplary life, prudence, discretion, and administrative abilities, especially (as he notably adds) now that the fear that a French Pope might again take the Roman Court to Avignon has vanished. Now the French party were able to muster about twenty-four votes among themselves; and they had reason to think that they could rely on four or five "accessits" from among the Imperialists. But still the twenty-eight or nine votes thus obtained were not enough to make an election-all which calculations were perfectly well known to everybody in Conclave. Their plan was therefore to obtain the secret promise of some four or five accessits, besides those which they could count upon as merely complimentary and given by men who were convinced that no election would be the result, which might be given unexpectedly at the last, after the others had been recorded, and thus an election

*It is fair to say that the word lodate is often used in such a manner as to justify the translation of it as simply "talked about," chiefly in the use of "sulodate " in the sense of "aforesaid."

†The exact meaning of this term, and the method of proceeding to the "accessit," will be described at a future page. After each scrutiny the voters were at liberty to change the vote they had just given for an "accession" to the numbers of those who had voted for another.