order of battle, with trumpets a-sounding and drums a-beating, he enters in and takes his lodging, by the means of his harbingers, wheresoever it seems to him good, has his bodies of guards set, posts his sentinels about the places and districts of the noble city, with no end of rounds and patrols, has his tribunals and his gallows planted in five or six different spots, his edicts and ordinances being published and proclaimed by sound of trumpet, as if he had been in Paris.  Go find me ever a King of France who did such things, save Charlemagne; yet trow I he did not bear himself with authority so superb and imperious.  What remained, then, more for this great king, if not to make himself full master of this glorious city which had subdued all the world in days of yore, as it was in his power to do, and as he, perchance, would fain have done, in accordance with his ambition and with some of his council, who urged him mightily thereto, if it were only for to keep himself secure.  But far from this:  violation of holy religion gave him pause, and the reproach that might have been brought against him of having done offence to his Holiness, though reason enough had been given him:  on the contrary, he rendered him all honor and obedience, even to kissing in all humility his slipper!” [Oeuvres de Brantome (Paris, 1822), t. ii. p. 3.] No excuse is required for quoting this fragment of Brantome; for it gives the truest and most striking picture of the conditions of facts and sentiments during this transitory encounter between a madly adventurous king and a brazen-facedly dishonest pope.  Thus they passed four weeks at Rome, the pope having retired at first to the Vatican and afterwards to the castle of St. Angelo, and Charles remaining master of the city, which, in a fit of mutual ill-humor and mistrust, was for one day given over to pillage and the violence of the soldiery.  At last, on the 15th of January, a treaty was concluded which regulated pacific relations between the two sovereigns, and secured to the French army a free passage through the States of the Church, both going to Naples and also returning, and provisional possession of the town of Civita Vecchia, on condition that it should be restored to the pope when the king returned to France.  On the 16th and 19th of January the pope and the king had two interviews, one private and the other public, at which they renewed their engagements, and paid one another the stipulated honors.  It was announced that, on the 23d of January, the Arragonese King of Naples, Alphonso II., had abdicated in favor of his son, Ferdinand II.; and, on the 28th of January, Charles VIII. took solemn leave of the pope, received his blessing, and left Rome, as he had entered it, at the head of his army, and more confident than ever in the success of the expedition he was going to carry out.

[Illustration:  Charles VIII——­293]