stendom. Alva was ordered to make peace on terms both honorable and
advantageous to his Holiness; since the King of Spain preferred to lose
the rights of his own crown rather than to impair those of the Holy See
in the least particular. Consequently, when Alva entered Rome in
peaceful pomp, he did homage for his master to the Pope, who was
generously willing to absolve him for his past offences. Paul IV.
publicly exulted in the abasement of his conquerors, declaring that it
would teach kings in future the obedience they owed to the Chief of the
Church. But Alva did not conceal his discontent. It would have been
better, he said, to have sent the Pope to sue for peace and pardon at
Brussels, than to allow him to obtain the one and grant the other on
these terms.

Paul's ambition to expel the Spaniards from Italy exposed him to the
worst abuses of that Papal nepotism which he had denounced in others. He
judged it necessary to surround himself with trusty and powerful agents
of his own kindred.[25]

[Footnote 25: New men--and Popes were always _novi homines_--are
compelled to take this course, and suffer when they take it. We might
compare their difficulties with those which hampered Napoleon when he
aspired to the Imperial tyranny over French conquests in Europe.]

With that view he raised one of his nephews, Carlo, to the Cardinalate,
and bestowed on two others the principal fiefs of the Colonna family.
The Colonnas were by tradition Ghibelline. This sufficed for depriving
them of Palliano and Montebello. Carlo Caraffa, who obtained the
scarlet, had lived a disreputable life which notoriously unfitted him
for any ecclesiastical dignity. In the days of Sixtus and Alexander this
would have been no bar to his promotion. But the Church was rapidly
undergoing a change; and Carlo, complying with the hypocritical spirit
of his age, found it convenient to affect a thorough reformation, and to
make open show of penitence. Rome now presented the singular spectacle
of an inquisitorial Pope, unimpeachable in moral conduct and zealous for
Church reform, surrounded by nephews who were little better than
Borgias. The Caraffas began to dream of principalities and scepters. It
was their ambition to lay hold on Florence, where Cosimo de'Medici, as
a pronounced ally of Spain, had gained the bitter hatred of their uncle.
But their various misdoings, acts of violence and oppression, avarice
and sensuality, gradually reached the ears of the