o Henry, to whom the grant of the
Cardinal's hat was to be represented as Leo's own idea.[177]

[Footnote 174: _L. and P._, i., 5319.]

[Footnote 175: _Ibid._, i., 4499, 4921.]

[Footnote 176: _Cf._ _Ven. Cal._, ii., 695; _L. and
P._, ii., 1380. Giustinian complains that Wolsey
"never said what he meant but the reverse of what
he intended to do" (_Ibid._, ii., 3081). This
perhaps is no great crime in a diplomatist.]

[Footnote 177: _L. and P._, i., 5110, 5121. Henry's
request that Leo should make Wolsey a Cardinal was
not made till 12th Aug., 1514 (_L. and P._, i.,
5318), at least six months after Wolsey had
instructed Pace to negotiate for that honour.]

CHAPTER IV. (p. 078)

THE THREE RIVALS.

The edifice which Wolsey had so laboriously built up was, however,
based on no surer foundation than the feeble life of a sickly monarch
already tottering to his grave. In the midst of his preparations for
the conquest of Milan and his negotiations for an attack upon Spain,
Louis XII. died on 1st January, 1515; and the stone which Wolsey had
barely rolled up the hill came down with a rush. The bourgeois Louis
was succeeded by the brilliant, ambitious and warlike Francis I., a
monarch who concealed under the mask of chivalry and the culture of
arts and letters a libertinism beside which the peccadilloes of Henry
or Charles seem virtue itself; whose person was tall and whose
features were described as handsome; but of whom an observer wrote
with unwonted candour that he "looked like the Devil".[178] The first
result of the change was an episode of genuine romance. The old King's
widow, "la reine blanche," was one of the most fascinating women of
the Tudor epoch. "I think," said a Fleming, "never man saw a more
beautiful creature, nor one having so much grace and sweetness."[179]
"He had never seen so beautiful a lady," repeated Maximilian's
ambassador, "her deportment is exquisite, both in conversation (p. 079)
and in dancing, and she is very lovely."[180] "She is very beautiful,"
echoed the staid old Venetian, Pasqualigo, "and has not her match in
England; she is tall, fair, of a light complexion with a colour, and
most affable and g