Nevertheless, he began to feel the gravity of the situation.  He saw that the embassies constituted dangerous centers of intrigue and national organization at Trent.  He was not entirely satisfied with his own Legate, the Cardinal Gonzaga, who supported the divine right of the episcopacy, and quarreled with his colleagues.  The Spaniards, infuriated at having sacrificed the right of proposing measures, began to talk openly about the reform of the Papacy.  Disagreeable messages reached Rome from France, and Spain, and Germany, complaining of the Pope’s absolutism in Council, and demanding that the reform of the Church should be taken into serious and instant consideration.  His devoted adherent, Lainez, General of the Jesuits, embittered opposition by passionately preaching the doctrine of passive obedience.  Two dangers lay before him.  One was that the Council should break up in confusion, with discredit to Rome, and anarchy for the Catholic Church.  The other was that it should be prolonged in its dissensions by the princes, with a view of depressing and enfeebling the Papal authority.  Other perils of an incalculable kind threatened him in the announced approach of the mighty Cardinal of Lorraine, brother to the Duke of Guise, with a retinue of French bishops released from the Conference at Poissy.  Though he kept on packing the Council with fresh relays of Italians, it was much to be apprehended that they might be unable to oppose a coalition between French and Spanish prelates, should that be now effected.

Pius, at this crisis, resolved on two important lines of policy, the energetic pursuit of which speedily brought the Council of Trent to a peaceful termination.  The first was to meet the demand for a searching reformation of the Church with cheerful acquiescence; but to oppose a counter-demand that the secular States in all their ecclesiastical relations should at the same time be reformed.  This implied a threat of alienating patronage and revenue from the princes; it also indicated plainly that the tiara and the crowns had interests in common.  The second was to develop the diplomatic system upon which he had already tentatively entered.

The events of the spring, 1563, hastened the adoption of these measures by the Pope.  Cardinal Lorraine had arrived with his French bishops[44]; and the Papal Legates found themselves involved at once in intricate disputes on questions touching the Huguenots and the interests of the Gallican Church.  The Italians were driven in despair to epigrams:  Dalla scabie Spagnuola siamo caduti nel mal Francese.  Somewhat later, the Emperor dispatched a bulky and verbose letter, announcing his intention to play the part which Sigismund had assumed at the Council of Constance.  He complained roundly of the evils caused by the reference of all resolutions to Rome, by the exclusive rights of the Legates to propose decrees, and by the intrigues of the Italian majority in the Synod.  He wound up by declaring that the