[542] Mémoires de Castlenau, liv. i., c. 1; Migne, ubi supra.
[543] Pasquier, an impartial writer, but somewhat given to panegyric, paints a very flattering portrait of Guise, in a letter written after the death of the duke: "Il fut seigneur fort débonnaire, bien emparlé tant en particulier qu'en public, vaillant et magnanime, prompt à la main," etc. Œuvres choisies, ii. 258.
[544] "Le due de Guyse, grand chef de guerre, et capitaine capable de servir sa patrie, si l'ambition de son frère ne l'eust prévenu et empoisonné. Aussi a-il dict plusieurs fois de luy: Cest homme enfin nous perdra." De l'Aubespine, Hist. part., iii. 286.
[545] "Di dir poche volte il vero. Poco veredico, di natura duplice ed avara, non meno nel suo particolare che nelle cose del rè." Suriano regards the cardinal as without a rival in this particular: "Che di saper dissimulare non ha pari al mondo." Tommaseo, i. 526.
[546] 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.)
[547] "Non credo fosse in quel regno desiderata alcuna cosa più che la sua morte." Relaz. di Gio. Michiel, Tommaseo, i. 440. I have united the accounts of two ambassadors, Soranzo and Michiel, the first belonging to 1558, the other to 1561. Both are contained in Tommaseo's edit. of the Relations Vénitiens.
[548] Werke, viii. 141.
[549] Brantôme, Œuvres (Ed. of Fr. Hist. Soc.), iv. 275, etc.
[550] "Et seroit à desirer que ceste femme et le cardinal n'eussent jamais esté; car ces deux seuls out esté les flamesches de nos malheurs." De l'Aubespine, iii. 286. The reader will, after this, make little account of the extravagant panegyric by the Father Alby (inserted by Migne in his Dict. des Card., s. v. Lorraine); yet he may be amused at the precise contradiction between the estimate of the cardinal's political services made by this ecclesiastic and that of the practical statesman given above. He seems to the priest born for the good of others: "ayant pour cela merité de la postérité toutes les louanges d'un homme né pour le bien des autres, et le titre même de cardinal de France, qui lui fut donné par quelques écrivains de son temps." This blundering eulogist makes him to have been assigned by Francis I. as counsellor of his son.
[551] Brantôme, Hommes illustres (Œuvres, viii. 63).