The fact that he had been thwarted by lax brethren and by an (from the Roman point of view) irreligious government commended the fiery monk still further to his reformer-friends. He received a chair at the Sapienza (Roman University) and was made Counsellor to the Holy Office. In 1565 Cardinal Buoncompagni was sent on a mission to Spain, and, apparently to the Cardinal's disgust, the learned friar was included in his train. The sincerely religious temper of Sixtus V. makes it difficult for some of his biographers to understand his very original character. In spite of his virtue he was quite clearly ambitious,--one must live in the ecclesiastical world to realize how the ambition of power and the ambition to do good fuse with each other in the clerical mind,--he had an atrocious temper, and he retained what higher-born prelates would call the rudeness of a peasant. He quarrelled with Buoncompagni, and, as the mission was never really discharged, he had no opportunity to distinguish himself. However, the new Pope (for whose election Buoncompagni returned prematurely to Rome) was the friendly Dominican colleague, Pius V. Padre Montalto was made Vicar Apostolic over the Franciscan Order--the General having died--and he made a drastic effort to reform the reluctant friars and nuns (1566-1568). For this he received the red hat (1570) and was entrusted with the task of editing the works of St. Ambrose. Unhappily for the ambitious cardinal-monk, Pius V. died in 1572, and Cardinal Buoncompagni ascended the throne and took the name of Gregory XIII. He withdrew the pension which Pius had assigned to Felice, and for the next thirteen years the Cardinal had to live in retirement and comparative poverty. In this again the very original character of Peretti reveals itself. One might expect that so stern a monastic reformer would retire to a friary when the Papal Court no longer required his presence, but he retired, instead, to his very comfortable palace and garden on the Esquiline. He had brought his sister Camilla and her son Francesco to live in this palace, and even romance and tragedy entered the friar's home. Francesco had married a beautiful and light-minded Roman girl, and her brother, Paolo Orsini, murdered Francesco in order to set her free for a nobler lover. The uncle could get no redress under Gregory XIII. He curbed his anger, quietly bent over his books, and watched the rising storm in Italy which was to close Gregory's reign.