"Your Excellency has now to learn the influence of unstable and malignant fortune upon this your unhappy servant. You know how often you have quoted me as an instance of happiness, saying that I had a beautiful and virtuous wife, by whom I was beloved, and on whom I doated; that I had the finest children, ample means, an excellent house well decorated, as well as comfortably furnished; and that I enjoyed the respect and good opinion of the world, as well as that most important advantage of all, your favour. Now you may see in how brief an interval I have fallen from that height of happiness into the depths of misery. I have lost my means, earned, as all know, most honourably, and with no small fatigue and peril. I have lost my independence; and, in a word, my every comfort. I have been deprived of my dearest wife, and with her have occasioned to my unhappy children the sacrifice of their mother's dowry, and of all my remaining prospect of maintaining them, and conducting them to that position which every respectable and affectionate parent would desire. But, worst of all, I perceive from obvious symptoms, that I have forfeited your favour without having given you the slightest cause. The reason of my sinking into these misfortunes, being obvious to the whole world, should not be concealed from you. I am so situated, that any one refusing to compassionate me must be devoid of pity and all good feeling; and if you still retain the smallest share of that magnanimity, generosity, or gratitude which you were wont so honourably to manifest to your servants, you will yet have pity on me, and will endeavour to raise me from that abyss of wretchedness into which I have fallen in your service." [Footnote *177: 1547.] This sad appeal meeting with no response, he retired from the Prince's service with a nominal pension of 300 scudi, which seems never to have been paid him. Writing to a friend, he says, "I have thrown out into this sea of troubles many anchors of reason, to save my tempest-tost mind from shipwreck. But I fear that, in the long run, if not conducted into port by a favouring breeze from some benignant prince, I may be swamped, from the cable of my constancy parting; for it is hard from prosperity and happiness to fall into misery, and struggle with famine." Scared away from Rome by the din of coming war, in the renewed strife between France and Spain for the domination of the Peninsula, and "Eating the bitter bread of banishment,"