Naples looked with sallow eyes on the amicable relations of the Papacy and France. The Christian King Louis XII married Duke Cesare de Valentinois to Madame Charlotte, daughter of Sieur Alain d’Albret and sister of King Jean of Navarre; and then entered into a treaty with the Venetian Senate for the partition of the duchy of Milan. These acts were discomfiting to the Regno, which could only regard the triumph of its enemy and the ruin of its friend as auguries of evil fortune. For Duke Cesare de Valentinois undoubtedly was the enemy of Naples now after the rejection of his suit to Doña Carlotta de Aragona, and in despite of the fact that his mother’s daughter, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, was allied by marriage to the Neapolitan Prince Don Alonso of Bisceglia. The fruit of this last union was a son, born in November 1499, baptized in the Xystine Chapel by the name Roderico after the August Father of Madonna Lucrezia. Troubles were brewing for the Sforza. The Vicechancellor-Cardinal left Rome, and the French invaded his brother’s duchy of Milan, driving Duke Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti (detto Il Moro) to ignominious flight. Ever ready to take advantage of the weakness of another Power, also ever ready to be jealous of another Power’s success, Europe eyed the triumph of France with apprehension and disgust. And when the Lord Alexander P.P. VI shewed pleasure at the fall of Milan, Spain and Portugal in their chagrin sent Orators to annoy His Holiness with invectives against His morals,[40] (as Satan sometimes denounces Sin,) and the validity of His election,[41] demanding impossible reforms, and a General Council at the Lateran. These petty incidents met the fate which they deserved. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI magnificently and magnanimously received the envoys in a public consistory, and made no efforts to prevent them from reciting their lessons. His Holiness invariably treated personalities with good-humoured scorn; and bore the vented spleen of kings as a mere essential inconvenience of His rank, to be brushed away and forgotten with the little muscarial nuisances of a Roman summer. * * * * *