That was the news of which the Lord Alexander P.P. VI chewed the cud at the time when He gave audience to the Prince of Altamura. With His magnificent talent for resolving diplomatic problems into their elements, from which He could discard those that He deemed useless while reserving those possessing salient features, the Pope’s Holiness concluded that the politics of Milan, of Tuscany, of the Regno, and the affairs of their respective rulers, were of secondary importance and altogether negligeable; but that the secret unauthorised transfer of papal fiefs into the hands of dangerous malcontents of the very powerful House of Orsini, required prompt decisive assertion of the rights of the Pontifical Suzerain. At the beginning of 1493, Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti was found to be urging the Supreme Pontiff to act against the illegal transfer of Cervetri and Anguillara. Loyalty to his brother, the usurping Regent of Milan, and his duty as Vicechancellor bound to maintain the paramountcy of the Holy Roman Church—these make clear his point of view. A clashing of interests between Papacy and Regno was an opportunity which Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere greatly relished. He did not hesitate to take the part of Naples. If he had one enemy whom he hated as perfervidly as he hated the Pope, that enemy was Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti whose exertions on behalf of his rival had deprived him of the tiara or triregno; and, having sworn that either he or Sforza-Visconti should quit the Sacred College, he avidly seized the present chance of belabouring the cardinal as well as the Pope. He had the support of Orsini, naturally. Colonna, always more Ghibelline than Guelf, was not unwilling to espouse the cause of a man who went about saying that the Pope’s Holiness was plotting to ruin his reputation—his reputation!—and to deprive him of his dignities: and hence arose a very singular and unusual combination.