, who sought in his vanity to assume the title of Formosus, and
whose tiara, valued at two hundred thousand florins, was bought at the
price of a terrible sin; Gian Maria Visconti, who used hounds to chase
living men, and whose murdered body was covered with roses by a harlot
who had loved him; the Borgia on his white horse, with Fratricide riding
beside him, and his mantle stained with the blood of Perotto; Pietro
Riario, the young Cardinal Archbishop of Florence, child and minion of
Sixtus IV., whose beauty was equalled only by his debauchery, and who
received Leonora of Aragon in a pavilion of white and crimson silk,
filled with nymphs and centaurs, and gilded a boy that he might serve at
the feast as Ganymede or Hylas; Ezzelin, whose melancholy could be cured
only by the spectacle of death, and who had a passion for red blood, as
other men have for red wine--the son of the Fiend, as was reported, and
one who had cheated his father at dice when gambling with him for his
own soul; Giambattista Cibo, who in mockery took the name of Innocent,
and into whose torpid veins the blood of three lads was infused by a
Jewish doctor; Sigismondo Malatesta, the lover of Isotta, and the lord
of Rimini, whose effigy was burned at Rome as the enemy of God and man,
who strangled Polyssena with a napkin, and gave poison to Ginevra d'Este
in a cup of emerald, and in honour of a shameful passion built a pagan
church for Christian worship; Charles VI., who had so wildly adored his
brother's wife that a leper had warned him of the insanity that was
coming on him, and who, when his brain had sickened and grown strange,
could only be soothed by Saracen cards painted with the images of Love
and Death and Madness; and, in his trimmed jerkin and jewelled cap and
acanthus-like curls, Grifonetto Baglioni, who slew Astorre with his
bride, and Simonetto with his page, and whose comeliness was such that,
as he lay dying in the yellow piazza of Perugia, those who had hated him
could not choose but weep, and Atalanta, who had cursed him, blessed
him.

There was a horrible fascination in them all. He saw them at night, and
they troubled his imagination in the day. The Renaissance knew of
strange manners of poisoning--poisoning by a helmet and a lighted torch,
by an embroidered glove and a jewelled fan, by a gilded pomander and by
an amber chain. Dorian Gray had been poisoned by a book. There were
moments when he looked on evil simply as a mode through w