Yet Philip had funds enough, if he had possessed financial ability himself, or any talent for selecting good financiers.  The richest countries of the old world and the new were under his sceptre; the mines of Peru and Mexico; the wealth of farthest Ind, were at his disposition; and moreover he drove a lucrative traffic in the sale of papal bulls and massbooks, which were furnished to him at a very low figure, and which he compelled the wild Indians of America and the savages of the Pacific to purchase of him at an enormous advance.  That very year, a Spanish carrack had been captured by the English off the Barbary coast, with an assorted cargo, the miscellaneous nature of which gives an idea of royal commercial pursuits at that period.  Besides wine in large quantities there were fourteen hundred chests of quicksilver, an article indispensable to the working of the silver mines, and which no one but the king could, upon pain of death, send to America.  He received, according to contract; for every pound of quicksilver thus delivered a pound of pure silver, weight for weight.  The ship likewise contained ten cases of gilded mass-books and papal bulls.  The bulls, two million and seventy thousand in number, for the dead and the living, were intended for the provinces of New Spain, Yucatan, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Philippines.  The quicksilver and the bulls cost the king three hundred thousand florins, but he sold them for five million.  The .price at, which the bulls were to be sold varied-according to the letters of advice found in the ships—­from two to four reals a piece, and the inhabitants of those conquered regions were obliged to buy them.  “From all this,” says a contemporary chronicler; “is to be seen what a thrifty trader was the king.”

The affairs of France were in such confusion that it was impossible for them, according to Farnese, to remain in such condition much longer without bringing about entire decomposition.  Every man was doing as he chose—­whether governor of a city, commander of a district, or gentleman in his castle.  Many important nobles and prelates followed the Bearnese party, and Mayenne was entitled to credit for doing as well as he did.  There was no pretence, however, that his creditable conduct was due to anything but the hope of being well paid.  “If your Majesty should decide to keep Mayenne,” said Alexander, “you can only do it with large:  sums of money.  He is a good Catholic and very firm in his purpose, but is so much opposed by his own party, that if I had not so stimulated him by hopes of his own grandeur, he would have grown desperate—­such small means has he of maintaining his party—­and, it is to be feared, he would have made arrangements with Bearne, who offers him carte-blanche.”