It is imperatively important to be able to distinguish between the Office and the Man; and to avoid the excessively vulgar error of confounding the general with the particular. The pontifical acts of Rodrigo, Who is called Alexander P.P. VI, will compare favourably with those of any Supreme Pontiff, from Simon, Who is called Peter P.P., to Gioacchino Vincenzo Rafaele Luigi, Who is called Leo P.P. XIII. His comportment as man, and Italian despot, is another matter. The just necessity of the distinction insistently is laid upon the student of His history. Man does not yearn to please a person who is playing ugly tricks upon him. The Lord Alexander P.P. VI particularly did not yearn to please the King of Naples. While the envoy of the Regno was displaying his royal father’s petition at the feet of the Father of princes and of kings, the Pope’s Holiness was digesting news of a trick which had been played upon Him by the intrigues of King Don Ferrando I. Don Franciotto Cibo, bastard of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII, had been enriched by his Father with the lordships of Cervetri and Anguillara. These were pontifical fiefs, held by feudal tenure from the Pope. Being a silly avaricious weakling, rather frightened of the responsibility of baronage, Don Franciotto Cibo sold the said lordships to Don Virginio Orsini for forty thousand ducats; and went to live at Florence under the protection of his brother-in-law Don Piero de’ Medici. Now Don Virginio Orsini had borrowed those forty thousand ducats from the King of Naples, who was his firm friend, and perfectly qualified to understand the loan to be a super-excellent investment. The lordships of Cervetri and Anguillara lay between the Regno and the territories of the Republic of Florence; and their transference into the hands of Orsini, Naples’ friend, signified the opening of a road from Naples into Tuscany, along which a Neapolitan army easily might travel, should King Don Ferrando be pleased to campaign in a northerly direction. It was Don Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti (detto Il Moro), the usurping Regent of Milan, who first saw the serious portent of this move: but, though he communicated his discovery to the Holiness of the Pope, he laboured under a slight misapprehension; for usurpers are the most touchy of mankind, and see an enemy in everything which they do not understand. The northern frontier of Tuscany impinged upon the southern frontier of Milan. Now that the southern frontier of Tuscany was connected, by Cervetri and Anguillara, with the Regno, Don Ludovico Maria suspected an alliance between Don Piero de’ Medici and King Don Ferrando I, between Tuscany and Naples, an alliance which most possibly implied designs detrimental to the duchy of Milan—after all the real Duchess Isabella was Naples’ bastard, thought Don Ludovico Maria, the usurper—; and he envoyed swift couriers to his brother the Vicechancellor-Cardinal in Rome, with instructions to advise the Pope’s Holiness of the imbroglio.