[Sidenote: The Nuncio Santa Croce.]

[Sidenote: The Cardinal of Ferrara.]

Pius, rendered more apprehensive by these continual tidings of evil, and
displeased with much that his legates had done,[1188] could no longer
delay to take decided action. Accordingly, he resolved to grant
Gualtieri's request, and to send as apostolic nuncio in his place Santa
Croce, Bishop of Pisa, who had formerly occupied this position at
Paris, but was now acting in a similar capacity in Portugal.[1189] But
so grave did the conjuncture appear in the eyes of the papal court,
that, at a solemn consistory held on the twenty-eighth of June, the
resolution was adopted to despatch a _third_ legate to St. Germain! The
pretext of this extraordinary mission was the desire to testify more
clearly than the selection of the two previously existing legates had
done, to the earnestness of the solicitude felt at Rome for the
interests of the Church in France.[1190] The true reason would appear to
have been to correct the mistakes which the existing legates were
supposed to have committed. For the delicate post of _legatus a latere_,
no better candidate could be found than the Cardinal of Ferrara.
Although a man of no high intellectual abilities, he had received a
thorough training in the Macchiavellian theory of politics,[1191] and,
during many years of diplomatic service, had enjoyed a fair opportunity
for schooling himself in its practical workings. The son of Lucretia
Borgia, the grandson of Pope Alexander the Sixth, could scarcely help
being an adept at intrigue. Next to this special qualification, his
highest recommendations were that he was the brother-in-law of Renee of
France, and so by marriage uncle of the Duke of Guise; and that he had
twelve good reasons for feeling deep concern for the steadfastness of
French orthodoxy, viz.: the three archbishoprics, the one bishopric, and
the eight rich abbeys which he held within the confines of Charles's
dominions, deriving therefrom an income which was popularly estimated at
from forty to sixty thousand crowns.[1192]

[Sidenote: Master Renard turned monk.]

The new legate accepted the appointment with alacrity. Not so the
nuncio. It was no small trial to leave the quiet court of Lisbon--where
his predecessors had been accustomed, during a short stay of a year or
two, to accumulate a handsome fortune[1193]--for the turmoil of the
French capital, threatened every day with the outbreak of civil war,
whe