Messer Giovanni,--You are much beholden to our Lord God, as we all are for your sake, as besides many benefits and honours our house has received from Him it has pleased Him to bestow on you the highest dignity our family has yet enjoyed. Great as this is it is much enhanced by circumstances, particularly your youth and our condition. Therefore my first recommendation is that you endeavour to be grateful to our Lord God, remembering every hour that it is not by your own merits or solicitude that you have attained the Cardinalate, but by the grace of God. Show your gratitude to Him by leading a saintly, exemplary, and honest life. You are the more bound to do this because during your youth you have shown a disposition which gives hope of good fruit. It would be indeed most shameful, contrary to your duty, and to my expectations if at a time when others generally acquire more reason and a better understanding of life, you should forget the good precepts learned as a boy. It is incumbent on you to try and lighten the burden of the dignity you have attained by leading a pure life and persevering in the studies suitable to your profession. I was greatly pleased last year to learn that without being reminded by any one you had been several times to confession and to communion, for I conceive there is no better way of obtaining the grace of God than by habituating oneself to persevere in these duties. This seems to me the best advice I can begin with. I know, as you are now going to Rome, that sink of all iniquities, that you will find some difficulty in following it, as bad examples are always catching, and inciters to vice will not be wanting. Your promotion to the Cardinalate, as you may imagine, at your age and for the other reasons already mentioned, will be viewed with great envy, and those who were not able to prevent your attaining this dignity will endeavour, little by little, to diminish it by lowering you in public estimation and causing you to slide into the same ditch into which they have themselves fallen, counting on success because of your youth. You must be all the firmer in your stand against these difficulties, as at present one sees such a lack of virtue in the College. I recollect however to have known a good many learned and good men in the College, leading exemplary lives. It will be well that you should follow their example, for by so doing you will be the more known and esteemed as being different from the others. It is imperative above all things that you should avoid as you would Scylla and Charybdis the reputation of being a hypocrite and of evil fame. Be not ostentatious, and have a care to avoid anything offensive in conduct and in conversation, without affecting austerity or severity. These are things you will in time understand and practise better, I conceive, than I can write them. You know how important is the position and the example of a Cardinal, and that the world would