Valentino's was a character peculiar to Spain, with which Pizarro alone seems to have matched. His boundless ambition was profoundly selfish and utterly unscrupulous; his energy of purpose owned no impulse but egotism; his capacity was marred by meanness; his splendid tastes served but as incentives to spoliation. The demands of honour, the compunctions of conscience, the value of human life availed nothing in his eyes. In him foresight became fraud, calculation cunning, prudence perfidy, courage cruelty. His daring, his constancy, his talent were devoted to murder, rapine, and treachery. His campaigns were massacres, his justice vengeance, his diplomacy a trick. Generosity was a stranger to his impulses, remorse to his crimes. * * * * * Fortune, so long adverse to Guidobaldo, at length smiled upon him. The election to the tiara of his relative and confidential friend, Cardinal della Rovere, freed him from anxiety as to the restoration of his duchy, and promised him a long career of prosperity and honour. His policy of supporting the Venetians in their views upon Romagna thus not only became superfluous as a check upon Borgia, but seemed not unlikely to place him in a dilemma with the Camera. The new Pontiff, therefore, lost no time in removing him from a position of such delicacy, by summoning him to Rome. The invitation found him encamped before Verucchio, whence he immediately set out; and, after devoting two days at Urbino to public thanksgivings and festivities for his own restoration and for the election of Julius, he performed the journey in a litter, his gout preventing him from riding. On the eleventh day, being the 20th of November, he was met at the Ponte Molle by a superbly caparisoned mule, and on it was painfully but honourably escorted by an imposing cortège to his apartment in the Vatican, under a salute from the artillery of St. Angelo. Notwithstanding his fatigue, he was bidden by the impatient Pontiff to supper that evening, and was received by his Holiness on the landing-place with equal favour and distinction.