y
the storm and the imminent danger to a state of abject terror, the
Pope--this old man of seventy-one--sat calm and intrepid, occasionally
crossing himself and pronouncing the name of Jesus, and encouraging the
very sailors by his example as much as by his words.

In Piombino Cesare had left Michele da Corella as his governor. This
Corella was a captain of foot, a soldier of fortune, who from the
earliest days of Cesare's military career had followed the duke's
fortunes--the very man who is alleged to have strangled Alfonso of
Aragon by Cesare's orders. He is generally assumed to have been a
Spaniard, and is commonly designated as Michelotto, or Don Miguel; but
Alvisi supposes him, from his name of Corella, to have been a Venetian,
and he tells us that by his fidelity to Cesare and the implicit
manner in which he executed his master's orders, he earned--as is
notorious--considerable hatred. He has been spoken of, indeed, as the
ame damnee of Cesare Borgia; but that is a purely romantic touch akin to
that which gave the same designation to Richelieu's Father Joseph.

The Romagna was at this time administered for Cesare Borgia by Ramiro
de Lorqua, who, since the previous November, had held the office of
Governor in addition to that of Lieutenant-General in which he had
been earlier invested. His power in the Romagna was now absolute, all
Cesare's other officers, even the very treasurers, being subject to him.

He was a man of some fifty years of age, violent and domineering, feared
by all, and the dispenser of a harsh justice which had at least the
merit of an impartiality that took no account of persons.

Bernardi gives us an instance of the man's stern, uncompromising,
pitiless nature. On January 29, 1502, two malefactors were hanged in
Faenza. The rope suspending one of them broke while the fellow was
alive, and the crowd into which he tumbled begged for mercy for him at
first, then, swayed by pity, the people resolved to save him in spite
of the officers of justice who demanded his surrender. Preventing
his recapture, the mob bore him off to the Church of the Cerviti. The
Lieutenant of Faenza came to demand the person of the criminal, but he
was denied by the Prior, who claimed to extend him sanctuary.

But the days of sanctuary were overpast, and the laws of the time held
that any church or consecrated place in which a criminal took refuge
should ipso facto be deemed unconsecrated by his pursuers, and further,