the first time connect Cesare with the deed. Until then the ambassadors'
letters from Rome in dealing with the murder and reporting speculation
upon possible murderers never make a single allusion to Cesare as the
guilty person.

Later, when once it had been bruited, it found its way into the writings
of every defamer of the Borgias, and from several of these it is taken
by Gregorovius to help him uphold that theory.

Two motives were urged for the crime. One was Cesare's envy of his
brother, whom he desired to supplant as a secular prince, fretting
in the cassock imposed upon himself which restrained his unbounded
ambition. The other--and no epoch but this one under consideration,
in its reaction from the age of chivalry, could have dared to level it
without a careful examination of its sources--was Cesare's jealousy,
springing from the incestuous love for their sister Lucrezia, which he
is alleged to have disputed with his brother. Thus, as l'Espinois has
pointed out, to convict Cesare Borgia of a crime which cannot absolutely
be proved against him, all that is necessary is that he should be
charged with another crime still more horrible of which even less proof
exists.

This latter motive, it is true, is rejected by Gregorovius. "Our sense
of honesty," he writes, "repels us from attaching faith to the belief
spread in that most corrupt age." Yet the authorities urging one motive
are commonly those urging the other, and Gregorovius quotes those that
suit him, without considering that, if he is convinced they lie in one
connection, he has not the right to assume them truthful in another.

The contemporary, or quasi-contemporary writers upon whose "authority"
it is usual to show that Cesare Borgia was guilty of both those
revolting crimes are: Sanazzaro, Capello, Macchiavelli, Matarazzo,
Sanuto, Pietro Martire d'Anghiera, Guicciardini, and Panvinio.

A formidable array! But consider them, one by one, at close quarters,
and take a critical look at what they actually wrote:

SANAZZARO was a Neapolitan poet and epigrammatist, who could not--his
times being what they were--be expected to overlook the fact that
in these slanderous rumours of incest was excellent matter for
epigrammatical verse. Therefore, he crystallized them into lines which,
whilst doing credit to his wit, reveal his brutal cruelty. No one will
seriously suppose that such a man would be concerned with the veracity
of the matter of his verses--even l