The affair could only be decided at Rome, and Leo X. took much trouble about it. He received the bastard of Savoy with the greatest honour, and this disagreeable person had the chief place at banquet, theatre, and concert. Leo took pleasure in talking with him, and made him describe Philiberta’s charms. As for making him bishop of Geneva, that did not cause the least difficulty. The pope cared nothing for Dean de Bonmont, the chapter, or the Genevans. ‘Let the duke give us his sister, and we will give you Geneva,’ said he to the graceless candidate. ‘You will then make over the temporal power to the duke.... The court of Rome will not oppose it; on the contrary, it will support you.’ Everything was settled between the pope, the duke, and the bastard. ‘John of Savoy,’ says a manuscript, ‘swore to hand over the temporal jurisdiction of the city to the duke, and the pope swore he would force the city to consent under pain of incurring the thunders of the Vatican.’[56] This business was hardly finished when the Swiss envoys arrived, empowered to procure the confirmation of Dean de Bonmont in his office of bishop. Simple and upright but far less skilful than the Romans and the Piedmontese, they appeared before the pope. Alas! these Alpine shepherds had no princess to offer to the Medici. ‘Nescio vos,’ said Leo X. ‘Begone, I know you not.’ He had his reasons for this rebuff; he had already nominated the bastard of Savoy bishop of Geneva. It was impossible to do a greater injury to any church. For an authority, and especially an elective authority, to be legitimate, it ought to be in the hands of the best and most intelligent, and he who exercises it, while administering with zeal, should not infringe the liberties of those he governs. But these are ideas that never occurred to the worthless man, appointed by the pope chief pastor of Geneva. He immediately however found flatterers. They wrote to him (and the letters are in the Archives of Geneva) that his election had been made _by the flock_ ... ‘not by mortal favour, but by God’s aid alone.’ It was however by the favour of the Queen of Naples, of Charles III., and by several other very mortal favours, that he had been nominated. He was exhorted to govern his church with integrity, justice, and diligence, as became his _singular gravity and virtue_.[57] The bastard did not make much account of these exhortations; his reign was a miserable farce, a long scandal. Leo X. was not a lucky man. By the traffic in indulgences he provoked the Reformation of Wittemberg, and by the election of the bastard he paved the way for the Reformation of Geneva. These are two false steps for which Rome has paid dearly.