At the last moment, Borgia's adherents, finding opposition vain, thought it best to lay the new occupant of St. Peter's chair under the obligation of their suffrages, a policy which Machiavelli had justly condemned as the greatest blunder ever committed by their leader. Some historians allege that their support was gained by an offer of Julius to maintain him in his dignities and investitures, betrothing his infant daughter to his own nephew the young Lord Prefect. Unlikely as this may seem, there is much apparent inconsistency in the Pontiff's treatment of him, which, if our authorities are to be trusted, showed nothing of that choleric temperament and energetic firmness which habitually characterised him. Within two days of his election, when speaking of Valentino to the Venetian envoy, he said, "We shall let him get off with all he has robbed from the Church in his evil hour, but would that the towns of Romagna were taken from him." Yet a change appears to have supervened, induced perhaps by Cesare's representations, which had formerly been successful with Pius III., that, under his sway, the influence of the Church in that province of her patrimony would be far better maintained than by handing it again to the old dynasties, whom he had with difficulty eradicated, and who had ever been turbulent vassals of the Apostolic Chamber. The now manifest intention of the Venetians to obtain a footing in that quarter, upon various pretexts founded on claims of the Manfredi and others of the dispossessed lords, gave cogency to this reasoning in the eyes of Julius, whose paramount policy of at all hazards aggrandising the keys, rendered Valentino's sovereignty preferable to such extension of their dominion, and may have somewhat extenuated the Borgian policy in his eyes. He therefore brought the usurper from St. Angelo to lodge in the Vatican, and entered with seeming cordiality into his views. But the lapse of a few days found his Holiness in another mood, declaring that his guest should not hold a single battlement throughout Italy, but might be thankful if spared his life and the treasures he had plundered, most of which were however already dissipated. From that moment the prestige of his position was at an end, and he remained at the palace "in small repute."