ast time with their mother Vanozza, on the night of
the 14th of June, in the year 1497. There has always been a dark mystery
about what followed. Many say that Caesar feared his brother's power and
influence with the Pope. Not a few others suggest that the cause of the
mutual hatred was a jealousy so horrible to think of that one may hardly
find words for it, for its object was their own sister Lucrezia. However
that may be, they supped together with their mother in her villa, after
the manner of Romans in those times, and long before then, and long
since. In the first days of summer heat, when the freshness of spring is
gone and June grows sultry, the people of the city have ever loved to
breathe a cooler air. In the Region of Monti there were a score of
villas, and there were wide vineyards and little groves of trees, such
as could grow where there was not much water, or none at all perhaps,
saving what was collected in cisterns from the roofs of the few
scattered houses, when it rained.

In the long June twilight the three met together, the mother and her two
sons, and sat down under an arbour in the garden, for the air was dry
with the south wind and there was no fear of fever. Screened lamps and
wax torches shed changing tints of gold and yellow on the fine linen,
and the deep-chiselled dishes and vessels of silver, and the tall
glasses and beakers of many hues. Fruit was piled up in the midst, such
as the season afforded, cherries and strawberries, and bright oranges
from the south. One may fancy the dark-browed woman of forty years, in
the beauty of maturity almost too ripe, with her black eyes and hair of
auburn, her jewelled cap, her gold laces just open at her marble throat,
her gleaming earrings, her sleeves slashed to show gauze-fine linen, her
white, ring-laden fingers that delicately took the finely carved meats
in her plate--before forks were used in Rome--and dabbled themselves
clean from each touch in the scented water the little page poured over
them. On her right, her eldest, Gandia, fair, weak-mouthed, sensually
beautiful, splendid in velvet, and chain of gold, and deep-red silk, his
blue eyes glancing now and then, half scornfully, half anxiously at his
strong brother. And he, Caesar, the man of infamous memory, sitting there
the very incarnation of bodily strength and mental daring; square as a
gladiator, dark as a Moor, with deep and fiery eyes, now black, now red
in the lamplight, the marvellous s