The indefatigable Pius, even before the treaty was signed, had despatched his nephew, Cardinal Alessandrino, to the different courts, to rouse the drooping spirits of the allies, and to persuade other princes of Christendom to join the league. In the middle of May, the legate, attended by a stately train of ecclesiastics, appeared at Madrid. Philip gave him a reception that fully testified his devotion to the Holy See. The king's brother, Don John, and his favourite minister, Ruy Gomez de Silva, with some of the principal nobles, waited at once on the cardinal who had taken up his quarters in the suburbs, at the Dominican monastery of Atocha, tenanted by brethren of his own order. On the following morning the papal envoy made his entrance, in great state, into the capital. He was mounted on a mule, gorgeously caparisoned, the gift of the city. John of Austria rode on his right; and he was escorted by a pompous array of prelates and grandees, who seemed to vie with one another in the splendour of their costumes. On the way he was met by the royal cavalcade. As the legate paid his obeisance to the monarch, he remained with his head uncovered; and Philip, with a similar act of courtesy, while he addressed a few remarks to the churchman, held his hat in his hand.[296] He then joined the procession, riding between the legate on the right and his brother on the left, who was observed, from time to time, to take part in the conversation,--a circumstance occasioning some surprise, says an historian, as altogether contrary to the established etiquette of the punctilious Castilian court.[297] [Sidenote: PREPARATIONS FOR THE WAR.] The ceremonies were concluded by religious services in the church of Santa Maria, where the legate, after preaching a discourse, granted all present a full remission of the pains of purgatory for two hundred years.[298] A gift of more worth, in a temporal view, was the grant to the king of the _cruzada_, the _excusada_, and other concessions of ecclesiastical revenue, which the Roman see knows so well how to bestow on the champions of the Faith. These concessions came in good time to supply the royal coffers, sorely drained by the costly preparations for the war.