ave been the conceit of the sword-maker
as a rather obvious play upon Cesare's name.(1) Undoubtedly, were the
device of Cesare's own adoption we should find it elsewhere, and nowhere
else is it to be found.

1 The scabbard of this sword is to be seen in the South Kensington
Museum; the sword itself is in the possession of the Caetani family.

Shortly after Cesare's return to Rome, Imola and Forli sent their
ambassadors to the Vatican to beseech his Holiness to sign the articles
which those cities had drawn up and by virtue of which they created
Cesare their lord in the place of the deposed Riarii.

It is quite true that Alexander had announced that, in promoting the
Romagna campaign, he had for object to restore to the Church the States
which had rebelliously seceded from her. Yet there is not sufficient
reason to suppose that he was flagrantly breaking his word in acceding
to the request of which those ambassadors were the bearers and in
creating his son Count of Imola and Forli. Admitted that this was to
Cesare's benefit and advancement, it is still to be remembered that
those fiefs must be governed for the Church by a Vicar, as had ever been
the case.

That being so, who could have been preferred to Cesare for the dignity,
seeing that not only was the expulsion of the tyrants his work, but that
the inhabitants themselves desired him for their lord? For the rest,
granted his exceptional qualifications, it is to be remembered that the
Pope was his father, and--setting aside the guilt and scandal of that
paternity--it is hardly reasonable to expect a father to prefer some
other to his son for a stewardship for which none is so well equipped
as that same son. That Imola and Forli were not free gifts to Cesare,
detached, for the purpose of so making them, from the Holy See, is clear
from the title of Vicar with which Cesare assumed control of them, as
set forth in the Bull of investiture.

In addition to his receiving the rank of Vicar and Count of Imola and
Forli, it was in this same month of March at last--and after Cesare may
be said to have earned it--that he received the Gonfalon of the
Church. With the unanimous concurrence of the Sacred College, the Pope
officially appointed him Captain-General of the Pontifical forces--the
coveting of which position was urged, it will be remembered, as one of
his motives for his alleged murder of the Duke of Gandia three years
earlier.

On March 29 Cesare comes to St