e humiliation of Italy, galled by the yoke of a
nation so abject. But the day had come, he would thunder out, when
Charles and Philip were to be called to a reckoning for their ill-gotten
possessions, and be driven from the land![135]

Yet Paul did not waste all his hours in this idle vaporing, nor in the
pleasures of the table. He showed the same activity as ever in the
labors of the closet, and in attention to business. He was irregular in
his hours, sometimes prolonging his studies through the greater part of
the night, and at others rising long before the dawn. When thus engaged,
it would not have been well for any one of his household to venture into
his presence, without a summons.

Paul seemed to be always in a state of nervous tension. "He is all
nerve," the Venetian minister, Navagero, writes of him; "and when he
walks, it is with a free, elastic step, as if he hardly touched the
ground."[136] His natural arrogance, was greatly increased by his
elevation to the first dignity in Christendom. He had always entertained
the highest ideas of the authority of the sacerdotal office; and now
that he was in the chair of St. Peter, he seemed to have entire
confidence in his own infallibility. He looked on the princes of Europe,
not so much as his sons--the language of the Church--as his servants,
bound to do his bidding. Paul's way of thinking would have better suited
the twelfth century than the sixteenth. He came into the world at least
three centuries too late. In all his acts he relied solely on himself.
He was impatient of counsel from any one, and woe to the man who
ventured to oppose any remonstrance, still more any impediment to the
execution of his plans. He had no misgivings as to the wisdom of these
plans. An idea that had once taken possession of his mind lay there, to
borrow a cant phrase of the day, like "a fixed fact,"--not to be
disturbed by argument or persuasion. We occasionally meet with such
characters, in which strength of will and unconquerable energy in action
pass for genius with the world. They, in fact, serve as the best
substitute for genius, by the ascendancy which such qualities secure
their possessors over ordinary minds. Yet there were ways of approaching
the pontiff, for those who understood his character, and who, by
condescending to flatter his humors, could turn them to their own
account. Such was the policy pursued by some of Paul's kindred, who,
cheered by his patronage, now came for