in less prosperous times, and the sharer of his misfortunes under
the previous reign, and was now his chief counsellor and minister. In
addition he besought--dependent, of course, upon the granting of
the solicited divorce--a dispensation to marry Anne of Brittany, the
beautiful widow of Charles VIII. This was Louis's way of raising the
price, as it were, of the concession and services asked of him; yet,
that there might be no semblance of bargaining, his consent to Cesare's
being created Duke of Valentinois was simultaneous with his request for
further favours.

With the Royal Patents conferring that duchy upon the Pope's son, Louis
de Villeneuve reached Rome on August 7, 1498. On the same day the young
cardinal came before the Sacred College, assembled in Consistory, to
crave permission to doff the purple.

After the act of adoration of the Pope's Holiness, he humbly submitted
to his brother cardinals that his inclinations had ever been in
opposition to his embracing the ecclesiastical dignity, and that, if he
had entered upon it at all, this had been solely at the instances of his
Holiness, just as he had persevered in it to gratify him; but that, his
inclinations and desires for the secular estate persisting, he implored
the Holy Father, of his clemency, to permit him to put off his habit and
ecclesiastical rank, to restore his hat and benefices to the Church, and
to grant him dispensation to return to the world and be free to contract
marriage. And he prayed the very reverend cardinals to use their good
offices on his behalf, adding to his own their intercessions to the
Pope's Holiness to accord him the grace he sought.

The cardinals relegated the decision of the matter to the Pope. Cardinal
Ximenes alone--as the representative of Spain--stood out against the
granting of the solicited dispensation, and threw obstacles in the way
of it. In this, no doubt, he obeyed his instructions from Ferdinand and
Isabella, who saw to the bottom of the intrigue with France that was
toward, and of the alliance that impended between Louis XII and the Holy
See--an alliance not at all to the interests of Spain.

The Pope made a speedy rout of the cardinal's objections with the most
apostolic and irresistible of all weapons. He pointed out that it was
not for him to hinder the Cardinal of Valencia's renunciation of the
purple, since that renunciation was clearly become necessary for the
salvation of his soul--"Pro salutae animae