[34] The good father Quintanilla vindicates his hero's chastity, somewhat at the expense of his breeding. "His purity was unexampled," says he. "He shunned the sex, like so many evil spirits; looking on every woman as a devil, let her be never so holy. Had it not been in the way of his professional calling, it is not too much to say he would never have suffered his eyes to light on one of them!" Archetypo, p. 80.
[35] Fléchier, Histoire de Ximenés, liv. 6, p. 634.
[36] Quintanilla has given the brief of his Holiness in extenso, with commentaries thereon, twice as long. See Archeotypo, lib. 4, cap. 10.
[37] Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 219.—Quintanilla, Archetype, lib. 2, cap. 4. The reader may find a pendant to this anecdote in a similar one recorded of Ximenes's predecessor, the grand cardinal Mendoza, in Part II. Chapter 5, of this History. The conduct of the two primates on the occasion, was sufficiently characteristic.
[38] Oviedo, Quincuagenas, MS.—Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, ubi supra.— Robles, Vida de Ximenez, cap. 13.—Quintanilla, Archetypo, lib. 2, cap. 5, 7, 8; who cites Dr. Vergara, the cardinal's friend. It is Baron Grimm, I think, who tells us of Fontenelle's habit of dropping his trumpet when the conversation did not pay him for the trouble of holding it up. The good- natured Reynolds, according to Goldsmith, could "shift his trumpet" on such an emergency also.
[39] Ximenes's head was examined some forty years after his interment, and the skull was found to be without sutures. (Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 218.) Richelieu's was found to be perforated with little holes. The abbé Richard deduces a theory from this, which may startle the physiologist even more than the facts. "On ouvrit son Test, on y trouva 12 petits trous par ou s'exhaloient les vapeurs de son cerveau, ce qui fit qu' il n'eut jamais aucun mal de tête; au lieu que le Test de Ximenés étoit sans suture, a quoi l'on attribua les effroyables douleurs de tête qu'il avoit presque toujours." Parallèle, p. 177.
[40] Robles, Vida de Ximenez, cap. 18.—Gomez, De Rebus Gestis, fol. 218.
[41] A little treatise has been devoted to this very subject, entitled "Parallèle du Card. Ximenés et du Card. Richelieu, par Mons. l'Abbé Richard; à Trevoux, 1705." 222 pp. 12mo. The author, with a candor rare indeed, where national vanity is interested, strikes the balance without hesitation in favor of the foreigner Ximenes.
[42] The catalogue of the various offices of Ximenes occupies near half a page of Quintanilla. At the time of his death, the chief ones that he filled were, those of archbishop of Toledo, and consequently primate of Spain, grand chancellor of Castile, cardinal of the Roman church, inquisitor-general of Castile, and regent.