The Duke had brought the King a letter from the Pope in which he said: “In order that your Majesty may see how great is our desire to please you in all things we are sending you our heart, that is our beloved son, the Duke of Valentinois, and we beseech your Majesty to treat him in such a way that all may know how dear this Caesar, whom I entrust to your kingly good faith, has become to you in all ways.” Thus far but one of the articles of the agreement between the Pope and the King had been carried out. By letters patent, dated August 13, 1498, Caesar had been created Duke of Valentinois and he had been received as such at the Court of France. The negotiations, however, which were intended eventually to make him the heir to a crown had failed. Louis had undertaken to secure the marriage of Caesar and Carlotta of Aragon, daughter of the King of Naples, but Frederic opposed it and the young woman herself absolutely refused to consent to the union. The brilliant entry into Chinon therefore was a fiasco, as Giuliano della Rovere, in a letter dated January 18, 1499, informed the Pope, who shortly after complained to the cardinal that the King had exposed him to ridicule, as it was known everywhere that Caesar had gone to France expressly to marry. Caesar, however, had displayed the astuteness and cunning that never deserted him, for when obstacles began to be interposed in the way of marrying Carlotta he pretended that he did not have the dispensation permitting Louis XII. to marry Anne of Bretagne. The King, however, had been informed by the Pope himself that the dispensation had been granted, consequently he had proceeded with his plans and the decree of divorce had been obtained. The political interests of the King of France in Italy were, however, more important than the purely personal question of his marriage with the widow of Charles VIII.; consequently it was greatly to his interest to find some way to gratify the Pope’s wishes, therefore he made another effort to overcome the opposition of Frederic and his daughter, but in vain. Louis thereupon decided to substitute his own niece, the daughter of the Count de Foix, but she, too, declined. Caesar, however, treated the matter in a cavalier manner, saying that if the King of Naples would have none of him because he was a natural son, Frederic himself was also illegitimate, merely a king’s bastard, while he himself--and he was proud of it--was the bastard of a pope!