assigned him, three horses, a servant, a chaplain, and the title of _bastard of Savoy_. He then began to hold up his head, and became the greediest, the most intriguing, the most irregular priest of his day. ‘That’s the man to be bishop of Geneva,’ thought the duke: ‘he is so much in my debt, he can refuse me nothing.’ There was no bargain the bastard would not snap at, if he could gain either money or position: to give up Geneva to the duke was an easy matter to him. Charles sent for him. ‘Cousin,’ said he, ‘I will raise you to a bishopric, if in return you will make over the temporality to me.’ The bastard promised everything: it was an unexpected means of paying his debt to the duke, which the latter talked about pretty loudly. ‘He has sold us not in the ear but in the blade,’ said Bonivard, ‘for he has made a present of us before we belonged to him.’[50] The duke without loss of time despatched his cousin to Rome, under the pretext of bearing his congratulations to Leo X. who had just succeeded Julius II.[51] John the Bastard and his companions travelled so fast that they arrived before the Swiss. At the same time the court of Turin omitted nothing to secure the possession of a city so long coveted. First, they began to canvass all the cardinals they could get at. On the 24th February the Cardinal of St. Vital, and on the 1st March the Cardinal of Flisco promised their services to procure the bishopric of Geneva for John of Savoy.[52] On the 20th of April the Queen of Naples wrote to the duke, that she had recommended John to her nephew, the Cardinal of Aragon.[53] This was not enough. An unforeseen circumstance favoured the designs of Savoy. The illustrious Leo X. who had just been raised to the papal throne, had formed the design of allying his family to one of the oldest houses in Europe. With this intent he cast his eyes on the Princess Philiberta of Savoy; a pure simple-hearted young girl, of an elevated mind, a friend to the poor, younger sister to the duke and Louisa of Savoy, aunt of Francis I. and Margaret of Valois. Leo X. determined to ask her hand for his brother Julian the Magnificent, lieutenant-general of the armies of the Church. Up to this time Julian had not lived a very edifying life; he was deeply enamoured of a widow of Urbino, who had borne him a son. To tempt the duke to this marriage, which was very flattering to the _parvenus_ of Florence, the pope made ‘many promises,’ say the Italian documents.[54] He even sent an envoy to the court of Turin to tell Charles that he might ‘expect from him all that the best of sons may expect from the tenderest of fathers.’[55]