Note 546 — Chapter VIII

Not to speak of the property he obtained by dispossessing the rightful owners, he received, by favor of Diana, on the death of his uncle, Cardinal John, the benefices the latter had enjoyed, with all his personal wealth. Charles now had 300,000 livres of income; but he never thought of paying off his uncle's enormous debts: "Laissa toutes les debtes d'iceluy, qui estoyent immenses, à ses créanciers, pour y succéder par droit de bangueroute!" De l'Aubespine, iii. 281. The papal envoy, Cardinal Prospero di Santa Croce, combines the traits of ambition, avarice, and hypocrisy in his portrait of his colleague in the sacred consistory, and makes little of his learning: "Carolus a Lotharingia ... juvenis non illiteratus, ac ingenio versuto et callido, maxime ambitioni et avaritiæ dedito, quæ vitia religionis ac sanctimoniæ simulatione obtegere conabatur." Prosperi Santacrucii de Civilibus Galliæ dissensionibus commentariorum libri tres (Martene et Durand Amplissima Collectio), v. 1438. After these delineations of his character by not unfriendly pens, it is scarcely surprising that a caustic contemporary pamphlet—Le livre des marchands (1565)—should describe him as "ce cardinal si avare, et si ambitieux de nature, que l'avarice et l'ambition mise dedans des balances, elles demeureroyent égalles entre deux fers." (Ed. Pantheon, p. 423.)