word to the Cardinal that he hoped very shortly to acquaint him of my being prisoner in the Castle of Saint Angelo, and that the Cardinal would be no better off for his Majesty’s amnesty, because the Pope said none but he could absolve or condemn cardinals.  Meantime all my domestics who were subjects of the King of France were ordered to quit my service, on pain of being treated as rebels and traitors.  I could have little hope of protection from the Pope, for he was become quite another man, never spoke one word of truth, and continually amused himself with mere trifles, insomuch that one day he proposed a reward for whoever found out a Latin word for “calash,” and spent seven or eight days in examining whether “mosco” came from “muses,” or “musts” from “mosco.”  All his piety consisted in assuming a serious air at church, in which, nevertheless, there was a great mixture of pride, for he was vain to the last degree, and envious of everybody.  The work entitled “Sindicato di Alexandro VII.” gives an account of his luxury and of several pasquinades against the said Pope, particularly that one day Marforio asking Pasquin what he had said to the cardinals upon his death-bed, Pasquin answered, “Maxima de aeipso, plurima de parentibus, parva de principibus, turpia de cardinalibus, pauca de Ecclesia, de Deo nihil.” ("He said fine things of himself, a great many things of his kindred, some things of princes, nothing good of the cardinals, but little of the Church, and nothing at all of God").  His Holiness, in a consistory, laid claim to the merit of the conversion of Christina, Queen of Sweden, though everybody knew to the contrary, and that she had abjured heresy a year and a half before she came to Rome.

Having heard that Bussiere, who is Chamberlain to the Ambassadors at Rome, had declared I should not have a place in Saint Louis’s church on the festival of that saint, I was not discouraged from going thither.  At my entrance he snatched the holy water stick from the cure just as he was going to sprinkle me; nevertheless, I took my place, and was resolved to keep up the status and dignity of a French cardinal.  This was my condition at Rome, where it was my fate to be a refugee, persecuted by my King and abused by the Pope.  All my revenues were seized, and the French bankers forbidden to serve me; nay, those who had an inclination to assist me were forced to promise they would not.  Two of the Abbe Fouquet’s bastards were publicly maintained out of my revenues, and no means were left untried to hinder the farmers from relieving me, or my creditors from harassing me with vexatious and expensive lawsuits.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

Help to blind the rest of mankind, and they even become blinder She had nothing but beauty, which cloys when it comes alone You must know that, with us Princes, words go for nothing