I make no apology for inserting these apparently trivial details in so condensed a narrative. They, most of all, illumine the next momentous phase of the history of the Papacy. In that year, 1492, a little German boy, named Martin Luther, sat at his books in the remote town of Mansfeld. Infessura records that Alexander opened his Pontificate with large promises and small instalments of reform. He was going to improve the condition of Rome and the Church, to pacify Italy, and to check the Turks; he would remove his children from Rome and reduce the number of sinecures at the Curia. He did, in fact, make a drastic beginning of the administration of justice, and even appointed certain hours during which he would himself hear grievances. Possibly he had a sincere mood of reform; though we are not disposed to be charitable when we recall the appalling levity with which, a few years later, after the murder of his son, he returned to vicious ways. Whatever his initial mood was, he soon entered upon courses which made his Pontificate one of the most degraded in the annals of the Papacy. Modern research has discredited some of the most romantic crimes attributed to him, but it leaves on his memory an indictment which no eager search for good qualities can materially lessen. He sustained the scandal of his personal conduct until the end of his life, and I will dismiss it briefly. During the first four years of his Pontificate, the youthful Giulia Orsini was his chief _favorita_--others are occasionally mentioned with that title by the ambassadors--and she was known to the wits of Rome as "the Spouse of Christ." She and Adriana Orsini and Girolama (the Pope's elder daughter) are described as "the heart and eyes of Alexander," and suitors had to seek their favour. When Giulia's brother Alexander received the red hat (Sept. 20, 1493), Rome gave the future Pope--who was by no means without personal merit--the name of "The Petticoat Cardinal." When her daughter Laura was born in 1497, the Pope was generally believed to be the father; though that remains a mere rumour. Pucci, in one of his dispatches, gives us a quaint picture. Giulia lived in Lucrezia's palace, apart from her husband, and, when the ambassador called one day in 1493, she dressed her long golden hair in his presence, and insisted that he must see the baby; and he remarks that the baby was "so very like the Pope that one can readily believe he was the father." Giulia was an almost indispensable figure for some years at the domestic (and even greater than domestic) festivities in the Vatican, laughing with the cardinals at the prurient comedies and still more prurient dances which enlivened the sacred palace.[278]