This presented such a great contrast to the corruption of the last reign,--in the course of which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked in public, when certain people were complaining of the venality of justice, "God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and pay,"-- that the capital of the Christian world felt for one brief moment restored to the happy days of the papacy.

So, at the end of a year, Alexander VI had reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which his predecessors lost.

His political credit was still to be established, if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme.

To arrive at this, he must employ two agencies--alliances and conquests.

His plan was to begin with alliances.