e king, and not until satisfied of the wife and his other
desires. And, whilst these things were toward, the king learnt from the
Bishop of Ceuta that the dispensation already existed, and so, without
having received or even seen it the marriage was celebrated, and
for revealing this the Bishop of Ceuta was put to death by order of
Valentinois."

Now, to begin with, Macchiavelli admits that what passed between Pope
and duke was secret. How, then, does he pretend to possess these
details of it? But, leaving that out of the question, his statement--so
abundantly repeated by later writers--is traversed by every one of the
actual facts of the case.

That there can have been no secret at all about the dispensation is made
plain by the fact that Manfredi, the Ferrarese ambassador, writes of it
to Duke Ercole on October 2--the day after Cesare's departure from Rome.
And as for the death of Fernando d'Almeida Bishop of Ceuta, this did not
take place then, nor until two years later (on January 7, 1499) at the
siege of Forli, whither he had gone in Cesare's train--as is related in
Bernardi's Chronicles and Bonoli's history of that town.

To return to the matter of Cesare's imminent departure unwed from
France, Louis XII was not the only monarch to whom this was a source
of anxiety. Keener far was the anxiety experienced on that score by the
King of Naples, who feared that its immediate consequence would be to
drive the Holy Father into alliance with Venice, which was paying its
court to him at the time and with that end in view. Eager to conciliate
Alexander in this hour of peril, Federigo approached him with
alternative proposals, and offered to invest Cesare in the
principalities of Salerno and Sanseverino, which had been taken from the
rebel barons. To this the Pope might have consented, but that, in the
moment of considering it, letters reached him from Cesare which made him
pause.

Louis XII had also discovered an alternative to the marriage of Cesare
with Carlotta, and one that should more surely draw the Pope into the
alliance with Venice and himself.

Among the ladies of the Court of Queen Anne--Louis had now been wedded
a month--there were, besides Carlotta, two other ladies either of whom
might make Cesare a suitable duchess. One of these was a niece of the
king's, the daughter of the Comte de Foix; the other was Charlotte
d'Albret, a daughter of Alain d'Albret, Duc de Guyenne, and sister to
the King of Navarre. B