Meanwhile the probabilities of a reunion with Rome had for a moment brightened. It was stated at the close of the last volume that, on the discovery of the adulteries of the queen, a panic arose among the Reformers, lest the king should regard her crime as a judgment upon the divorce, and in the sudden revulsion retrace his steps. It was seen, too, that after her punishment their fears were allayed by an act of parliament against the Papal usurpations, the most emphatic which had yet been passed, and that the country settled back into an equilibrium of permanent hostility. There are circumstances remaining to be explained, both with respect to the first alarm and to the statute by which it was dispelled. [Sidenote: May. Expectations formed at Rome on the disgrace of Queen Anne.] [Sidenote: May 27. The Pope entreats Sir Gregory Cassalis to intercede with Henry for a reconciliation.] The partial advances which had been made by the Pope had been neither accepted nor rejected, when, on the 20th of May, a courier from England brought the news of Anne's misdemeanours to Rome. The consistory would have been more than mortal if they had not been delighted. From the first they had ascribed the king's conduct to the infatuating beauty of Catherine's rival. It was she who, tigress-like, had thirsted for the blood of their martyrs, and at her shrine they had been sacrificed.[28] Her character appeared at last in its true colours; the enchantment was broken, and the abhorrence with which Henry's name had so lately been regarded was changed throughout Italy to a general feeling of pity.[29] The precious sheep who had been lost to the Church would now return to the fold, and the Holy Father would welcome back his erring child with paternal affection.[30] This seems to have been the general expectation; unquestionably it was the expectation of the Pope himself. Paul sent again for Sir Gregory Cassalis, and after expressing his delight that God had delivered the king from his unhappy connexion, he told him that he waited only for the most trifling intimation of a desire for reunion to send a nuntio to England to compose all differences and to grant everything which the king could reasonably demand.[31] Limiting, like a man of business, the advantages which he had to offer to the present world, the Pope suggested that Henry, in connexion with himself, might now become the arbiter of Europe, and prescribe terms to the Empire as well as to France. For himself and for his office he said he had no ambition. The honour and the profit should alike be for England. An accession of either to the pontificate might prove its ruin.[32] He lauded the king's early character, his magnanimity, his generous assistance in times past to the Holy See, his devotion to the Catholic faith. Forgetting the Holy League, glossing over the Bull of Deposition as an official form which there had been no thought of enforcing, he