Unintimidated, he entered the Conclave for the election of a successor to Calixtus, and there the chance which so often prefers to bestow its favours upon him who knows how to profit by them, gave him the opportunity to establish himself as firmly as ever at the Vatican, and further to advance his interests.
It fell out that when the scrutiny was taken, two cardinals stood well in votes--the brilliant, cultured Enea Silvio Bartolomeo de' Piccolomini, Cardinal of Siena, and the French Cardinal d'Estouteville--though neither had attained the minimum majority demanded.

Of these two, the lead in number of votes lay with the Cardinal of Siena, and his election therefore might be completed by Accession--that is, by the voices of such cardinals as had not originally voted for him--until the minimum majority, which must exceed two-thirds, should be made up.
The Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Roderigo de Lanzol y Borja led this accession, with the result that the Cardinal of Siena became Pontiff--as Pius II--and was naturally enough disposed to advance the interests of the man who had been instrumental in helping him to that eminence.

Thus, his position at the Vatican, in the very face of all hostility, became stronger and more prominent than ever.
A letter written two years later from the Baths at Petriolo by Pius II to Roderigo when the latter was in Siena--whither he had been sent by his Holiness to superintend the building of the Cathedral and the Episcopal and Piccolomini palaces--is frequently cited by way of establishing the young prelate's dissolute ways.

It is a letter at once stern and affectionate, and it certainly leaves no doubt as to what manner of man was the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor in his private life, and to what manner of unecciesiastical pursuits he inclined.

It is difficult to discover in it any grounds upon which an apologist may build.
"BELOVED SON, "When four days ago, in the gardens of Giovanni de Bichis, were assembled several women of Siena addicted to worldly vanity, your worthiness, as we have learnt, little remembering the office which you fill, was entertained by them from the seventeenth to the twenty-second hour.