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