e of bearing arms against
the Church. Paul, soothed by this show of concession, readily granted
absolution. He paid the duke the distinguished honor of giving him a
seat at his own table; while he complimented the duchess by sending her
the consecrated golden rose, reserved only for royal persons and
illustrious champions of the Church.[181]

[Sidenote: PAUL CONSENTS TO PEACE.]

Yet the haughty spirit of Alva saw in all this more of humiliation than
of triumph. His conscience, like that of his master, was greatly
relieved by being discharged from the responsibilities of such a war.
But he had also a military conscience, which seemed to be quite as much
scandalized by the conditions of the peace. He longed to be once more at
Naples, where the state of things imperatively required his presence.
When he returned there, he found abundant occupation in reforming the
abuses which had grown out of the late confusion, and especially in
restoring, as far as possible, the shattered condition of the
finances,--a task hardly less difficult than that of driving out the
French from Naples.[182]

Thus ended the war with Paul the Fourth,--a war into which that pontiff
had plunged without preparation, which he had conducted without
judgment, and terminated without honor. Indeed, it brought little honor
to any of the parties concerned in it, but, on the other hand, a full
measure of those calamities which always follow in the train of war.

The French met with the same fate which uniformly befell them, when,
lured by the phantom of military glory, they crossed the Alps to lay
waste the garden of Italy,--in the words of their own proverb, "the
grave of the French." The duke of Guise, after a vexatious campaign, in
which it was his greatest glory that he had sustained no actual defeat,
thought himself fortunate in being allowed a free passage, with the
shattered remnant of his troops, back to his own country. Naples,
besides the injuries she had sustained on her borders, was burdened with
a debt which continued to press heavily for generations to come. Nor
were her troubles ended by the peace. In the spring of the following
year, 1558, a Turkish squadron appeared off Calabria; and, running down
the coast, the Moslems made a landing on several points, sacked some of
the principal towns, butchered the inhabitants, or swept them off into
hopeless slavery.[183] Such were some of the blessed fruits of the
alliance between the grand seignior