Every hope of union seemed lost. The ship which the politic King of France had launched, and to which the hand of the pious Melancthon had fastened the banners of peace, had been carried upon the breakers; all attempts to get her out to sea again appeared useless; there was neither water enough to float her, nor wind enough to move her. She was about to be abandoned, when a sudden breeze extricated her from the shallows, and launched her once more upon the wide ocean. Clement VII. having died of chagrin, occasioned by the prospect of a future in which he could see nothing but deception and sorrow,[681] the King of France considered himself thenceforward liberated from the promises made to Catherine’s uncle. Ere long the choice of the Sacred College gave him still greater liberty. Alexander Farnese, who, under the title of Paul III., succeeded Clement, was a man of the world; he had studied at Florence in the famous gardens of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and from his youth had lived an irregular life. On one occasion, being imprisoned by his mother’s orders in the castle of St. Angelo, he took advantage of the moment when the attention of his jailers was attracted by the procession of Corpus Christi to escape through a window by means of a rope. Although he had two illegitimate children, a son and a daughter, he was made cardinal, and from that hour kept his eyes steadily fixed upon the triple crown. He obtained it at last, at the age of sixty-seven, and declared that in religious matters he would follow very different principles from those of his predecessors. This man, who had so much need of reformation for himself and his family, was engrossed wholly with reforming the Church. We shall find not only a king of France, but a pope of Rome also, making advances to Melancthon. Leo X. bequeathed schism to Christendom. Paul III. undertook to restore unity, and thus hoped to acquire a greater glory than that of the Medicis. He promised the ambassadors of Charles V. to call a council, and four days after his election declared his intentions in full consistory. ‘I desire a reform,’ he said; ‘before we attempt to change the universal Church, we must first sweep out the court of Rome;’ and he nominated a congregation to draw up a plan of reform. Proud of his skill, he thought that everything would be easy to him, and already triumphed in imagination over the Germans, who were, in his opinion, so boorish, and the Swiss, who were so barbarous. Francis I., satisfied with this disposition of the pope, was not unaware, besides, that he had private means of communicating with him. The first secretary of his Holiness was Ambrosio, an influential man and by no means averse to presents. A person who had need of his services having given him sixty silver basins with as many ewers, ‘How is it,’ said a man one day, ‘that with all these basins to wash in, his hands are never clean?’[682] [Sidenote: Popery In France.]