But Ferrante’s good qualities were overshadowed by many bad ones. His illegitimate birth placed him from childhood in a false position. As a boy he learned to master his passions, and acquired a control over his words and manner which too often degenerated into dissimulation to secure his ends. Philippe de Commines (a contemporary somewhat prejudiced, it is true, against the house of Aragon), says, when speaking of Alfonso of Calabria, ‘The father was more dangerous than the son, for nobody ever understood either the man or his real thoughts. With an assumed smiling manner he would deceive and betray people; there was neither grace nor mercy in his disposition, as even his relatives and adherents acknowledged; he knew neither mercy nor pity for his poor people where money was concerned.’ In trying to promote trade and commerce he thought first of the interests of his own exchequer, and burdened the people with socages, requisitions, and duties which too often defeated his own object. From the very beginning of his reign he had to contend with difficulties with his relatives, with his subjects, with the Popes, till his natural distrustfulness had deepened into gloomy suspicion. The remembrance of past (and by no means always justifiable) opposition and the dread of fresh outbreaks, increased by the frequent threats on the part of foreign countries to revive the claims of Anjou, led him astray to unjust and cruel actions whereby he undermined the throne, to strengthen which was his constant and never-ceasing aim. The feudal arrangements of the kingdom not only weakened Ferrante’s political power, but had the inconvenient consequence of keeping him poor. It is difficult to believe that the ruler of such a fertile country, though in great part uncultivated, was in almost continual want of money, and was always obtaining drafts on foreign, and especially Florentine, banks, to which, in his turn, he had to give drafts on the current revenues. He once asked Lorenzo for a loan of 10,000 gold florins, which Lorenzo cut down to half; and Filippo Strozzi advanced him 20,000 on one occasion, besides undertaking the expense of provisioning the capital.