My ambassador has written to tell me that at last by the kindness of Your Holiness the contract of the alum works has been awarded to me, for this I owe infinite thanks to Your Holiness who has thus added another to the many obligations I already owe, and hope to enjoy in the future from the liberality and kindness of Your Beatitude. I am exceedingly grateful for and pleased by the paternal charity shown to me every day by Your Holiness, and should be yet more happy did I not hear that Your Holiness has been suffering from gout and slight fever. Although the attack is not a severe one, still, depending as I do on Your Holiness, and Your Holiness’ life being of such importance, I cannot but feel uneasy even at a small indisposition, particularly as these attacks come oftener than one could wish. Your Holiness can rest assured that even as S. Francis by reason of his stigmate felt the pain of the wounds of Jesus Christ, thus do I feel every pain and ill suffered by Your Holiness in my own person and am much molested thereby. Among other things the condition of our Ser Francesco[375] touches me deeply, as well as that of other dependants of Your Holiness, who by reason of the uprightness and honesty of Your Beatitude may be said to be still fasting and to have had but a small share of the great good fortune which our Lord God has so worthily bestowed on Your Holiness. Should anything happen to Your Holiness, _quod absit_, the sepulchre will open also for them. Although I feel compassion for them all I am more moved by what ought to touch Your Holiness more nearly than myself, and that is the sad condition of poor Ser Francesco, who in the five years of the pontificate of Your Holiness has never yet had anything he can call his own. Your Holiness is the best judge of what support he enjoys in the Sacred College and what office, dignity or means, he has to enable him to live, even poorly. If Your Holiness studies the lives of other Popes you will see that there are but few who during five years of pontifical rule, and some in even less time, have not manifested their intention of acting as a Pope, and have not shown the respect for honesty and uprightness displayed by Your Holiness, which is justified before God and man. But speaking as a devoted servant, this honesty might now be imputed and attributed to another motive. Maybe I appear presumptuous, but zeal and the duty I owe to Your Holiness so touch my conscience that I must speak thus openly and remind Your Holiness that all men are mortal, and that a Pope is what he wills to be; he cannot leave the Papacy as a heritage and can only call his own the honours, the glory and the benefits, he gives to his family. The prudence, experience and long acquaintance Your Sanctity has of a court, will I am sure without words from me, recall to Your Holiness what always happens to the fortune and inheritance of popes, and seeing that Ser Francesco