Monsignor Viale, nuncio at Vienna, and Monsignor Sacconi, nuncio at Munich, were assiduous and eager in detailing the sinister reports touching Rome and the Pope, and colored them in such a way as to create an apprehension of schism, the most serious one that could rise for a popeand that pope, too, Pius IX.

" When Leo's short-lived successor, the gloomy Fleming, Adrian VI., who was the author of the proposal to destroy Pasquin, despatched his nuncio to the diet of Nuremberg to oppose the progress of Luther, he told him in his instructions to "avow frankly that God has permitted this schism and this persecution on account of the sins of men, and, above all, of those of the priests and the prelates of the Church.

He seemed come upon the stage to do the poet's message simply, and he did it with as genuine fidelity as the nuncios in Homer deliver the errands of the gods.

André Hurault, Seigneur de Maisse, had been ambassador to Venice under both Henri III and Henri IV, and in his official capacity had frequent disputes with the nuncios of Sixtus V and Clement VIII, in consequence of which those prelates exerted all their influence to injure his interests at the Court of Rome.

The entertainment commenced with the entrance of Apollo and the nine Muses into the great hall of the palace, which was thronged with native and foreign princes, ambassadors, and ministers, in the midst of whom sat the King with the Papal Nuncio on his right hand.

He, however, received the Pope's nuncios with lively satisfaction and the most striking proofs of respect; and he promised them, not to make war on the Lombards, but to employ his influence with King Luitprandt to make him cease from threatening Rome.