pardon for having flouted him.

While matters stood so in Arezzo, Pisa declared spontaneously for
Cesare, and sent (on June 10) to offer herself to his dominion and to
announce to him that his banner was already flying from her turrets--and
the growth of Florence's alarm at this is readily conceived.

To Cesare it must have been a sore temptation. To accept such a
pied-a-terre in Tuscany as was now offered him would have been the first
great step towards founding that kingdom of his dreams. An impulsive
man had surely gulped the bait. But Cesare, boundless in audacity, most
swift to determine and to act, was not impulsive. Cold reason, foresight
and calculation were the ministers of his indomitable will. He looked
ahead and beyond in the matter of Pisa's offer, and he perceived the
danger that might await him in the acceptance. The time for that was
not yet. To take what Pisa offered might entail offending France, and
although Cesare was now in case to dispense with French support, he was
in no case to resist her opposition.

And so, the matter being considered and determined, Cesare quitted Rome
on the 12th and left it for the Pope to give answer to the Pisan envoys
in the Consistory of June 14--that neither his Holiness nor the Duke of
Valentinois could assent to the proposals which Pisa made.

From Rome Cesare travelled swiftly to Spoleto, where his army, some ten
thousand strong, was encamped. He was bent at last upon the conquest
of Camerino, and, ever an opportunist, he had seized the moment when
Florence, which might have been disposed to befriend Varano, Tyrant of
Camerino, was over-busy with her own affairs.

In addition to the powerful army awaiting him at Spoleto, the duke had
a further 2,000 men in the Romagna; another 1,000 men held themselves
at his orders between Sinigaglia and Urbino, and Dionigio di Naldo was
arming yet another 1,000 men at Verucchio for his service. Yet further
to increase this force, Cesare issued an edict during his brief sojourn
at Spoleto ordering every house in the Romagna to supply him with one
man-at-arms.

It was whilst here--as he afterwards wrote to the Pope--that news
reached him that Guidobaldo da Montefeltre, Duke of Urbino, was arming
men and raising funds for the assistance of Camerino. He wrote that
he could not at first believe it, but that shortly afterwards--at
Foligni--he took a chancellor of Camerino who admitted that the hopes
of this State were all founded