from a sacred to a secular dignity; a circumstance that must necessarily
make him, from the manner in which it was to be conducted, the instrument
of Louis the Twelfth. [5]

This unsavory rebuke, which probably lost nothing of its pungency from the
tone in which it was delivered, so incensed the pope that he attempted to
seize the paper and tear it in pieces, giving vent at the same time to the
most indecent reproaches against the minister and his sovereigns.
Garcilasso coolly waited till the storm had subsided, and then replied
undauntedly, "That he had uttered no more than became a loyal subject of
Castile; that he should never shrink from declaring freely what his
sovereigns commanded, or what he conceived to be for the good of
Christendom; and, if his Holiness were displeased with it, he could
dismiss him from his court, where he was convinced, indeed, his residence
could be no longer useful." [6]

Ferdinand had no better fortune at Venice, where his negotiations were
conducted by Lorenzo Suarez de la Vega, an adroit diplomatist, brother of
Garcilasso. [7] These negotiations were resumed after the occupation of
Milan by the French, when the minister availed himself of the jealousy
occasioned by that event to excite a determined resistance to the proposed
aggression on Naples. But the republic was too sorely pressed by the
Turkish war,--which Sforza, in the hope of creating a diversion in his own
favor, had brought on his country,--to allow leisure for other operations.
Nor did the Spanish court succeed any better at this crisis with the
emperor Maximilian, whose magnificent pretensions were ridiculously
contrasted with his limited authority, and still more limited revenues, so
scanty, indeed, as to gain him the contemptuous epithet among the Italians
of _pochi denari_, or "the Moneyless." He had conceived himself, indeed,
greatly injured, both on the score of his imperial rights and his