the fruit it bore when you
read that Cesare Borgia was a blood-glutted monster of carnage who
ravaged the Romagna, rending and devouring it like some beast of prey.

On the 26th the Council waited upon Cesare at the Hospital of the
Osservanza--where he was lodged--to tender the oath of fealty. That same
evening Astorre himself, attended by a few of his gentlemen, came to the
duke.

To this rather sickly and melancholy lad, who had behind him a terrible
family history of violence, and to his bastard brother, Gianevangelista,
the duke accorded the most gracious welcome. Indeed, so amiable did
Astorre find the duke that, although the terms of surrender afforded
him perfect liberty to go whither he listed, he chose to accept the
invitation Cesare extended to him to remain in the duke's train.

It is eminently probable, however, that the duke's object in keeping the
young man about him was prompted by another phase of that policy of
his which Macchiavelli was later to formulate into rules of conduct,
expedient in a prince:

"In order to preserve a newly acquired State particular attention should
be given to two points. In the first place care should be taken entirely
to extinguish the family of the ancient sovereign; in the second, laws
should not be changed, nor taxes increased."

Thus Macchiavelli. The second point is all that is excellent; the first
is all that is wise--cold, horrible, and revolting though it be to our
twentieth-century notions.

Cesare Borgia, as a matter of fact, hardly went so far as Macchiavelli
advises. He practised discrimination. He did not, for instance, seek the
lives of Pandolfaccio Malatesta, or of Caterina Sforza-Riario. He saw
no danger in their living, no future trouble to apprehend from them. The
hatred borne them by their subjects was to Cesare a sufficient guarantee
that they would not be likely to attempt a return to their dominions,
and so he permitted them to keep their lives. But to have allowed
Astorre Manfredi, or even his bastard brother, to live would have been
bad policy from the appallingly egotistical point of view which was
Cesare's--a point of view, remember, which receives Macchiavelli's
horribly intellectual, utterly unsentimental, revoltingly practical
approval.

So--to anticipate a little--we see Cesare taking Astorre and
Gianevangelista Manfredi to Rome when he returned thither in the
following June. A fortnight later--on June 26--the formidable amazon of
Forli