In reality, he did not know what course to pursue. At one time he was ready to throw himself into Charles's arms and run the same chances with him; and then, on learning what had taken place at Boulogne and Calais, he trembled lest the King of France should throw off his obedience. These two terrible monarchs made a shuttlecock of the pope, and drove him to despair. But he remembered how Machiavelli had said, that the world is governed by two things—force and cunning; and leaving the former to the emperor, he took refuge in the latter. 'Accordingly Clement determined to move softly,' says Du Bellay, 'temporising, quibbling, waiting, and stopping to see what the French cardinals would bring him.' They arrived just at this critical moment. It was an ill-omened embassy for France, since no event of the sixteenth century did more to strengthen the dominion of intrigue, cowardice, debauchery, crime, and persecution in that country. [Sidenote: THE FRENCH ENVOYS AND CLEMENT.] Cardinal de Tournon, the most influential of the two ambassadors, was a skilful priest, devoted to the pope and popery, cruel, the accomplice of the Guises in after years, and all his life one of the greatest enemies of religious liberty. His colleague, Cardinal de Gramont, Bishop of Tarbes and afterwards Archbishop of Toulouse, was a more pliable diplomatist, and had been employed in England at the time of the dissolution of Henry's marriage with Catherine of Arragon. The first of these two men was the more hierarchical, the second the more politic; but both had the interests of their master Francis at heart. Their mission was difficult, and they had many a consultation about what was to be done. Tournon was ready to sacrifice everything, truth in the first place, in order to unite the king with the pope. 'It is to be feared,' he said to his colleague, 'that if we let the holy father know all the discontent of the two kings, we shall but increase his despair; and that the emperor, profiting by our threats, will gain him over and do with him as he likes, which would lead to the disturbance of christendom.' Instead of carrying out the Calais resolutions, Tournon and Gramont determined to put them aside. They thought that Francis I. was going wrong, and desired to be more royalist than the king himself. To win the pope from Charles V. and give him to Francis I. was the great work they resolved to attempt at Bologna. The emperor was there, and he was a stout antagonist; but the two priests were not deficient in skill. To save catholicism threatened in France, and to lay the kingdom at the pope's feet, was their aim. 'Let us carry out our instructions,' they said, 'by beginning with the last article. Instead of employing severity first and mildness last, we will do just the contrary.'[358]