Borgia to Giovanni Sforza, the comely weakling who was Lord of
Pesaro and Cotignola.

Lucrezia Borgia's story has been told elsewhere; her rehabilitation
has been undertaken by a great historian(1) among others, and all
serious-minded students must be satisfied at this time of day that the
Lucrezia Borgia of Hugo's tragedy is a creature of fiction, bearing
little or no resemblance to the poor lady who was a pawn in the
ambitious game played by her father and her brother Cesare, before she
withdrew to Ferrara, where eventually she died in child-birth in her
forty-first year. We know that she left the duke, her husband, stricken
with a grief that was shared by his subjects, to whom she had so deeply
endeared herself by her exemplary life and loving rule.(2)

1 Ferdinand Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.
2 See, inter alia, the letters of Alfonso d'Este and Giovanni Gonzaga on
her death, quoted in Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.

Later, in the course of this narrative, where she crosses the story
of her brother Cesare, it will be necessary to deal with some of
the revolting calumnies concerning her that were circulated, and, in
passing, shall be revealed the sources of the malice that inspired them
and the nature of the evidence upon which they rest, to the eternal
shame alike of those pretended writers of fact and those avowed writers
of fiction who, as dead to scruples as to chivalry, have not hesitated
to make her serve their base melodramatic or pornographic ends.

At present, however, there is no more than her first marriage to be
recorded. She was fourteen years of age at the time, and, like all the
Borgias, of a rare personal beauty, with blue eyes and golden hair.
Twice before, already, had she entered into betrothal contracts with
gentlemen of her father's native Spain; but his ever-soaring ambition
had caused him successively to cancel both those unfulfilled contracts.
A husband worthy of the daughter of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was no
longer worthy of the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, for whom an alliance
must now be sought among Italy's princely houses. And so she came to be
bestowed upon the Lord of Pesaro, with a dowry of 30,000 ducats.

Her nuptials were celebrated in the Vatican on June 12, 1493, in
the splendid manner worthy of the rank of all concerned and of the
reputation for magnificence which the Borgia had acquired. That night
the Pope gave a supper-party, at which were present some ten cardina