Of the sack of Rome which intervened I shall say nothing. Would God that I could as easily dismiss its memory from my mind. I entered the city with the youngest son of the Marchesa Isabella d'Este, Ferrante Gonzaga, who commanded a division of Spaniards, and we made our way at once to the Colonna palace which refuge the Marchesa had packed with her friends. Their lives we saved and the palace from burning and plundering. Cardinal Pompeo himself paid the ransoms of many of its guests, and rescued from the Spanish soldiery upwards of five hundred nuns. Far be it from me to extenuate the life of that profligate prelate, but his brave and generous acts at this fearful time must be counted to his credit. After that horror of cruelty and wanton destruction abated I counted on being free to seek Fenice and my sister, but greatly to my disgust, I was constituted the warden of the Pope, who was confined a close prisoner in the castle of St. Angelo. Though this seemed to me at the time a great hardship it proved in the end the best that could have happened, for so I came to know Clement most intimately and even to feel a pity for one so beset. I well remember his dismay when Ippolito de' Medici came to him with the alarming news that the Orsini, who, under cover of their devotion to the Pope embraced every opportunity to fight the Colonnas, had refused to recognise that the war was ended and were now burning and pillaging the castles of their rivals throughout the Campagna. Ippolito reported that Fenice and my sister were for the present safe, having fortified themselves in Palliano, but he desired the Pope to send him with orders to Napoleone Orsini to restrain his wild clansmen, and also to grant him a far greater favour. This was no less than absolution from clerical vows, which he had taken at the time of my sister's marriage, and permission, since she was now a widow, to ask for her hand. But Clement knew that Ippolito's next move would be to use my sister's wealth to secure the government of Florence, which his Holiness desired for his more favoured nephew Alessandro. He therefore refused to release Ippolito from his vows as a churchman, salving the wound by creating him a cardinal and promising that he should one day succeed to the tiara. Then, imagining that he had thus disposed forever of so slight a thing as a young man's passion, he bade him make all speed to the pacifying of the truculent Orsini, for he well knew that unless this were instantly done the Emperor would call him in question for their unruliness. I had been present during this interview, as was my duty, and the Pope now turned to me and bade me assist Ippolito by all means in my power, and we went forth together to prepare for the expedition. But Ippolito's face was all aflame, and he could at first speak of nothing but his disappointment. "By the Blood!" he cried, "his Holiness shall rue his interference in my love affairs, for I will balk him yet."