Ferdinand, in spite of the outward amity signed and sealed at Barcelona, had worked secretly from the first to prevent the success of Charles VIII.’s ambitions. Roussillon and Cerdagne once secured, he had no inducement to keep his bargain; and, when the French King on the eve of the invasion sent to remind him of his promise to help in the crusade, the elder statesman, though apparently enthusiastic, proceeded craftily to withdraw his support. Charles had placed the idea of ultimate war against the Turks well in the foreground of his public programme, with merely a casual allusion to his designs on Italy; and this enabled Ferdinand, while acclaiming war on the Infidel as the one ambition of his life, to denounce the rest of the proposal with mingled surprise and horror. His ambassador, Don Alonso de Silva, begged the French King in moving terms to desist from an expedition that could only prove the scandal of Christianity; but still more forcible was his argument that, since Naples was a fief of the Church, any attack made on that kingdom would at once absolve his master from his alliance with France. The allegiance of Ferdinand to the Holy See had been an item of too frequent recurrence in the Treaty of Barcelona for Charles to miss the point; and, as he turned from De Silva in fury, he realized that he had been badly duped. One of the greatest strokes of good fortune for a man [says Guicciardini] is to have an opportunity of showing that in the things he does for his own interest he is moved by the thought of the public good. This is what shed glory on the enterprises of the Catholic King. What he did for his own security and aggrandizement often looked as if it were done for the advancement of the Christian Faith or the defence of the Church. Ferdinand may appear a consummate scoundrel to modern minds, but in his own day it can be seen that he was not without admirers. From grief at an injury offered to a Papal fief, his opposition to France on the Pope’s behalf grew so rapidly that Alexander VI. was induced in 1494, not only to grant to him and his Queen, as we have already noticed, the title of “Catholic Kings,” but to concede to them as part of their revenue two-ninths of the Spanish tithes and rights of sovereignty over most of the North African coast. Nor was this cordial relationship affected by the peace with France, into which Alexander was temporarily driven when Charles VIII. hammered at the gates of Rome; for hardly had this second Charlemagne and his army vanished southwards than the plots for his undoing were redoubled.