The rising monk was seen and understood by the
Cardinals Carpi and Alexandrino; and by the latter he was appointed
Inquisitor-general at Venice. Here was fortune for the poor trampled boy
of Ancona! But to rest there was not his purpose. A little of the
tranquillity he knew so well how to assume, or even the mere abstinence
from violence and insult, would have retained him in his post; but,
instead of this he became harsh, stern, and peremptory to a degree that
outraged every body who came near him, and carried out the measures he
determined on with an arbitrary vehemence that bordered on frenzy. The
jealous republicans were astonished, but not terrified: the liberties of
their strange tyranny were at stake: and, at length, the Venetian magnates
rose like one man, and Father Montalto only escaped personal violence by
flight. And so he was a martyr to the cause of the church! And so all eyes
were drawn upon him, as a man ready in action, and inflexible in will. He
was now invited by the Cardinal Buon-Campagno to accompany him to Madrid
as his chaplain and inquisitorial adviser, the cardinal being sent thither
as legate from the Pope to his Catholic majesty. Montalto's was an office
both of power and dignity, and he acquitted himself in it so zealously,
that on the legate's recall he was offered all sorts of ecclesiastical
honors and preferment to induce him to settle in Spain. But the monk had
other aspirations. The news of the death of Pius IV. had reached Madrid,
and Montalto's patron, Cardinal Alexandrino, would doubtless succeed to
the papal throne. He would want assistance, and, what is more, he could
repay it; and Father Montalto, rejecting the Spanish offers, hastened to
Rome. He found his friend, now Pius V., mindful of his former services,
and perhaps flattered by the reputation which his protege had made in the
world. He was kindly received, and immediately appointed general of his
order.

And now the _ci-devant_ hog-boy set to sweep the church anew, but in a
different way. He no longer troubled himself with theological
controversies, but punished his contumacious opponents. In four years
after the accession of the new Pope he was made a bishop, and handsomely
pensioned; and in the year 1570 our adventurer was admitted into the
College of Cardinals.

Montalto was now fifty years of age, when the will is at its proudest, and
the intellectual nature smiles at the changing hair and its prophecies of
physical deca