Charles, better known as the Cardinal of Lorraine, was one of the wealthiest ecclesiastics of the day. In addition to his share of his father’s large fortune, he possessed benefices yielding him a yearly income of 300,000 livres.[90] This prelate, whom Pius V. called “the Ultramontane Pope,” was a man of unbounded ambition, strong passions, great craft, and such fertility of expedients, that his enemies declared he must have a familiar spirit at his elbow. He was a graceful speaker, and of goodly presence,[91] but such an arrant coward, that (like Horace) he used to make a jest of it. Charles IX. gave him permission to be attended by an armed guard even to the steps of the altar, intermixing the smell of gunpowder with the odor of incense.[92] His character has probably been much distorted. He had enemies everywhere, and, in an unscrupulous age, slander and falsehood were ready weapons to damage a rival. He was not so bad as many churchmen of his time; for if he was profligate, he was not profligate openly. He kept neither hawks nor hounds; he sang mass often, fasted regularly, wore sackcloth, and always said grace before his meals. Claude de Saintes, who was in almost daily attendance upon him for sixteen years, speaks of the mortifications of his life, and denies his excessive timidity.[93] Contarini, the Venetian ambassador, extols his virtuous habits, so unlike those of other French cardinals; and Giovanni Soranzo, writing seven years later (1558) says: “He is not much beloved; he is far from truthful, naturally deceitful and covetous, but _full of religion_.”[94] The religion thus praised was one of forms only.