The latter so little suspected the impending danger, that he had come into Italy to solicit the prelate’s inheritance. It was evident that the sickly bastard had not long to live. ‘I will go to Rome,’ said Bonivard to his friends, ‘to obtain the bishop’s benefices by means of a _cardination_’ (an intrigue of cardinals).[154] He desired eagerly to be bishop and prince of Geneva; had he succeeded, his liberal catholicism would perhaps have sufficed for the citizens, and prevented the Reformation. Bonivard reached Rome without any obstacle six years after Luther, and like the reformer was at once struck by the corruption which prevailed there. ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘is so full of bad humours, that it has become dropsical.’[155] It was in the pontificate of Leo X.; all that priests, monks, bishops, and cardinals thought about was being present at farces and comedies, and of going masked to courtesans’ houses.[156] Bonivard saw all this with his own eyes, and has left us some stories into which he has admitted expressions we must soften, and details we must suppress. ‘Having business one day with the concubinary of the pope’s cubicular (we leave these unusual expressions, the meaning of which is not very edifying), I had to go and find him at a courtesan’s.... She wore smart feathers, waving over a fine gold coif, and a silk dress with slashed sleeves; you would have taken her for a princess.’[157] Another day, while walking in the city, he met one of these ‘misses,’ disguised as a man, and riding on a Spanish jennet; on the crupper behind her was a _janin_ wrapped in a Spanish cape, which he drew carefully over his nose so that he might not be recognised. ‘Who is he?’ asked Bonivard. ‘It is Cardinal So-and-so with his favourite,’ was the reply. ‘We say in my country,’ he rejoined, ‘that all the madmen are not at Rome; and yet I see you have them in abundance.’[158]
The prior of St. Victor did not lose sight of the object of his journey, and canvassed unceasingly; but began to despair of success. ‘Do you wish to know,’ he was asked, ‘what you must do to obtain a request from the pope and cardinals? Tell them that you will kill any man whom they have a grudge against; or that you are ready to serve them in their pleasures, to bring them _la donna_, to gamble, play the ruffian, and rake with them--in short, that you are a libertine.’ Bonivard was not strict; yet he was surprised that things had come to such a pass in the capital of catholicism. His mind, eager to learn, asked what were the causes of this decline.... He ascribed it to the disappearance of christian individualism from the Church, so that a personal conversion, a new creature, was required no longer. ‘That in the first place,’ he said, ‘because when princes became christians, their whole people was baptised with them. Discipline has been since then like a spider’s web which catches the small flies, but cannot hold the large ones. And next it comes from the example of the popes.... I have lived to see three pontiffs. First, Alexander VI., a _sharp fellow_,[159] a ne’er-do-well, an Italianised Spaniard,--and what was worst of all,--at Rome! a man without conscience, without God, who cared for nothing, provided he accomplished his desires. Next came Julius II., proud, choleric, studying his bottle more than his breviary; mad about his popedom, and having no thought but how he could subdue not only the earth, but heaven and hell.[160] Last appeared Leo X., the present pope, learned in Greek and Latin, but especially a good musician, a great glutton, a deep drinker; possessing beautiful pages whom the Italians style _ragazzi_; always surrounded by musicians, buffoons, play-actors, and other jesters; accordingly when he was informed of any new business, he would say: _Di grazia, lasciatemi godere queste papate in pace; Domine mio me la ha date. Andate da Monsignor di Medici_.[161] ... Everything is for sale at the court: red hats, mitres, judgeships, croziers, abbeys, provostries, canonries.... Above all do not trust to Leo the Tenth’s word; for he maintains that since he dispenses others from their oaths, he can surely dispense himself.’[162]