Paul III. was as free from persecuting instincts as Pius IX. He had been a man of the world, was the father of children, and had a natural human heart within his bosom. But at his elbow stood one, who was all priest. No merciful weakness, no natural affection, no human sympathy, no shade of misgiving, ever checked John Peter Caraffa in his crusade against free human thought. When Paul was doubtfully deliberating what measures might best be adopted to check the progress of heresy in Italy, Caraffa promptly decided for him, that the Inquisition was the one thing wanted,—the Inquisition with fullest powers of imprisonment, confiscation, and death, and he himself as Chief Inquisitor,—this, by God's help, and that of fire and sword, and nothing else than this, would succeed in victoriously crushing and extirpating hydra–headed heresy. On the 21st of July, 1542, the requisite bull was obtained from Paul III., and Caraffa rushed to his work, with the avidity of an unleashed hound on his prey. [Sidenote: RENÉE'S TROUBLES.] Such signs of the times were not lost upon Duke Hercules, and reproduced themselves in sundry painful forms in the interior of the palace. The Duchess is still found to have about her persons "of very unwholesome smell;"[53] the flock of them have to be overhauled by the Duke's new Jesuit director, Pelletario, and all those found "with the rot upon them" are got rid of. A powerful stream of pure doctrine was turned on upon the infected Duchess, and sacraments were prescribed without much success. The "miserable woman" is found with flesh–meat on her table on a Friday; and the justly exasperated Duke, at his wits' end, has to shut her up in her apartment, with two attendants only, and send her daughters to a convent. "Now, though Renée was very astute," writes the historian, "far more so than the Duke and all his counsellors, yet it is not permissible to attribute wholly to her cunning the surprising conversion that was operated in her, immediately after she was shut up."[54] The imprisoned lady, under plainly miraculous influence, sent suddenly for her husband's priest, made a full confession, placed her conscience entirely in his keeping, and asked for the sacrament from his hands. So efficacious a spiritual agent is a little persecution, that astute as the patient was, and temporary as the conversion was proved in the sequel, the historian cannot believe but that some genuine spiritual effect was produced by it. It at all events had the effect of releasing Renée from her durance, and restoring her daughters to her. For the Duke, delighted at the success of his discipline, "admitted her to sup with him that same evening."