le
grain of real evidence is forthcoming. Indeed, at this time of day
evidence is no longer called for where the sins of the Borgias
are concerned. Oft-reiterated assertion has usurped the place of
evidence--for a lie sufficiently repeated comes to be credited by its
very utterer. And meanwhile the calumny has sped from tongue to tongue,
from pen to pen, gathering matter as it goes. The world absorbs the
stories; it devours them greedily so they be sensational, and writers
well aware of this have been pandering to that morbid appetite for some
centuries now with this subject of the Borgias. A salted, piquant tale
of vice, a ghastly story of moral turpitude and physical corruption,
a hair-raising narrative of horrors and abominations--these are the
stock-in-trade of the sensation-monger. With the authenticity of the
matters he retails such a one has no concern. "Se non e vero e ben
trovato," is his motto, and in his heart the sensation-monger--of
whatsoever age--rather hopes the thing be true. He will certainly
make his public so believe it; for to discredit it would be to lose
nine-tenths of its sensational value. So he trims and adjusts his wares,
adds a touch or two of colour and what else he accounts necessary
to heighten their air of authenticity, to dissemble any peeping
spuriousness.

A form of hypnosis accompanies your study of the subject--a suggestion
that what is so positively and repeatedly stated must of necessity be
true, must of necessity have been proved by irrefutable evidence at some
time or other. So much you take for granted--for matters which began
their existence perhaps as tentative hypotheses have imperceptibly
developed into established facts.

Occasionally it happens that we find some such sentence as the following
summing up this deed or that one in the Borgia histories: "A deal of
mystery remains to be cleared up, but the Verdict of History assigns the
guilt to Cesare Borgia."

Behold how easy it is to dispense with evidence. So that your tale
be well-salted and well-spiced, a fico for evidence! If it hangs not
overwell together in places, if there be contradictions, lacunae, or
openings for doubt, fling the Verdict of History into the gap, and so
strike any questioner into silence.

So far have matters gone in this connection that who undertakes to set
down to-day the history of Cesare Borgia, with intent to do just and
honest work, must find it impossible to tell a plain and straightfor