t same month of October, Cesare arrived in Pesaro. His
entry was a triumphant procession, and the orderliness that prevailed
among the two thousand men-at-arms that he brought with him was a thing
that spoke eloquently for the wondrous discipline enforced by this great
condottiero.

The Lord Filippo was among those that met him, and like the time-server
that he was, he placed the Sforza Palace at his disposal.

The Duca Valentino came with his retinue and the gentlemen of his
household, among whom was ever conspicuous by his great size and red
ugliness the Captain Ramiro del' Orca, who now seemed to act in many
ways as Cesare's factotum. This captain, for reasons which it is
unnecessary to detail, I most sedulously avoided.

On the evening of his arrival Cesare supped in private with Filippo and
the members of Filippo's household--that is to say, with Madonna Paola
and two of her ladies, and three gentlemen attached to the person of
the Lord Filippo. Cesare's only attendants were two cavaliers of his
retinue, Bartolomeo da Capranica, his Field-Marshal, and Dorio Savelli,
a nobleman of Rome.

Cesare Borgia, this man whose name had so terrible a sound in the ears
of Italy's little princelings, this man whose power and whose great
gifts of mind had made him the subject of such bitter envy and fear,
until he was the best-hated gentleman in Italy--and, therefore, the most
calumniated--was little changed from that Cardinal of Valencia, in
whose service I had been for a brief season. The pallor of his face was
accentuated by the ill-health in which he found himself just then, and
the air of feverish restlessness that had always pervaded him was grown
more marked in the years that were sped, as was, after all, but natural,
considering the nature of the work that had claimed him since he had
deposed his priestly vestments. He was splendidly arrayed, and he bore
himself with an imperial dignity, a dignity, nevertheless, tempered with
graciousness and charm, and as I regarded him then, it was borne in upon
me that no fitter name could his godfathers have bestowed on him than
that of Cesare.

The Lord Filippo exerted all his powers worthily to entertain his noble
and illustrious guest, and by his extreme, almost servile affability it
not only would seem that he had forgotten the favour and shelter he
had received at the hands of the Lord Giovanni, but it confirmed my
suspicions of his willingness to advance his own fortunes by