He was a _bon vivant_, and a _viveur_.

He loved money, and he was utterly unscrupulous as to the means by which he obtained it.

His career in the direction of the Sacred College was cut short, when he was very near its attainment, by a scandalous transaction, in which, although he was nearly eighty years of age, he played the principal part.

He colluded with a notary, named Bachetti, to falsify the will of one Vitelli, a wealthy contractor, inserting in the place of the testator's two orphan nieces that of _his own natural son_.

The affair having been dragged to light, Gregory XVI.