The latter so little suspected the impending danger, that he had come into Italy to solicit the prelate’s inheritance. It was evident that the sickly bastard had not long to live. ‘I will go to Rome,’ said Bonivard to his friends, ‘to obtain the bishop’s benefices by means of a _cardination_’ (an intrigue of cardinals).[154] He desired eagerly to be bishop and prince of Geneva; had he succeeded, his liberal catholicism would perhaps have sufficed for the citizens, and prevented the Reformation. Bonivard reached Rome without any obstacle six years after Luther, and like the reformer was at once struck by the corruption which prevailed there. ‘The Church,’ he said, ‘is so full of bad humours, that it has become dropsical.’[155] It was in the pontificate of Leo X.; all that priests, monks, bishops, and cardinals thought about was being present at farces and comedies, and of going masked to courtesans’ houses.[156] Bonivard saw all this with his own eyes, and has left us some stories into which he has admitted expressions we must soften, and details we must suppress. ‘Having business one day with the concubinary of the pope’s cubicular (we leave these unusual expressions, the meaning of which is not very edifying), I had to go and find him at a courtesan’s.... She wore smart feathers, waving over a fine gold coif, and a silk dress with slashed sleeves; you would have taken her for a princess.’[157] Another day, while walking in the city, he met one of these ‘misses,’ disguised as a man, and riding on a Spanish jennet; on the crupper behind her was a _janin_ wrapped in a Spanish cape, which he drew carefully over his nose so that he might not be recognised. ‘Who is he?’ asked Bonivard. ‘It is Cardinal So-and-so with his favourite,’ was the reply. ‘We say in my country,’ he rejoined, ‘that all the madmen are not at Rome; and yet I see you have them in abundance.’[158]