Fortunately the chair of St. Peter was occupied, at this crisis, by Pius the Fifth, one of those pontiffs who seem to have been called forth by the exigencies of the time, to uphold the pillars of Catholicism, as they were yet trembling under the assaults of Luther. Though he was near seventy years of age, the fire of youth still glowed in his veins. He possessed all that impetuous eloquence which, had he lived in the days of Peter the Hermit, would have enabled him, like that enthusiast, to rouse the nations of Europe to a crusade against the infidel. But the days of the crusades were past; and a summons from the Vatican had no longer the power to stir the souls of men like a voice from heaven. The great potentates of Europe were too intent on their own selfish schemes to be turned from these by the apprehension of a danger so remote as that which menaced them from the East. The forlorn condition of Venice had still less power to move them; and that haughty republic was now made to feel, in the hour of her distress, how completely her perfidious and unscrupulous policy had estranged from her the sympathies of her neighbours. There was one monarch, however, who did not close his ears against the appeal of Venice,--and that monarch, one of more importance to her cause than any other, perhaps all others united. In the spring of 1570, Luigi Torres, clerk of the apostolic chamber, was sent to Spain by Pius the Fifth, to plead the cause of the republic. He found the king at Ecija, on the route from Córdova, where he had been for some time presiding over a meeting of the Cortes. The legate was graciously received by Philip, to whom he presented a letter from his holiness, urging the monarch, in the most earnest and eloquent language, to give succour to Venice, and to unite with her in a league against the infidel. Philip did not hesitate to promise his assistance in the present emergency; but he had natural doubts as to the expediency of binding himself by a league with a power on whose good faith he had little reliance. He postponed his decision until his arrival at Seville. Accompanied by the legate, on the first of May, he made his solemn entry into the great commercial capital of the South. It was his first visit there, and he was received with tumultuous joy by the loyal inhabitants. Loyalty to their monarchs has ever been a predominant trait of the Spaniards; and to none of their princes did they ever show it in larger measure than to Philip the Second. No one of them, certainly, was more thoroughly Spanish in his own nature, or more deeply attached to Spain.