than which--submitted as sober fact--nothing more amazingly
lurid has been written. In this, with a suggestive cleverness entirely
Gallic, he causes us to gather an impression of Cesare in the intestinal
sudatorium of that eventrated bull, as of one who is at once the
hierophant and devotee of a monstrous, foul, and unclean rite of some
unspeakable religion--a rite by comparison with which the Black Mass of
the Abbe Gribourg becomes a sweet and wholesome thing.

But hear the man himself:

"Cet homme de meurtres et d'inceste, incarne dans l'animal des
hecatombes et des bestialites antiques en evoque les monstrueuses
images. Je crois entendre le taureau de Phalaris et le taureau de
Pasiphae repondre, de loin, par d'effrayants mugissements, aux cris
humains de ce bucentaure."

That is the top note on this subject. Hereafter all must pale to
anti-climax.

CHAPTER II. PIUS III

The fever that racked Cesare Borgia's body in those days can have been
as nothing to the fever that racked his mind, the despairing rage that
must have whelmed his soul to see the unexpected--the one contingency
against which he had not provided--cutting the very ground from
underneath his feet.

As he afterwards expressed himself to Macchiavelli, and as Macchiavelli
has left on record, Cesare had thought of everything, had provided for
everything that might happen on his father's death, save that in such a
season--when more than ever he should have need for all his strength of
body and of mind--he should, himself, be lying at the point of death.

Scarce was Alexander's body cold than the duke's enemies began to lift
their heads. Already by the 20th of that month--two days after the Pope
had breathed his last--the Orsini were in arms and had led a rising, in
retort to which Michele da Corella fired their palace on Montegiordano.

Venice and Florence bethought them that the protection of France had
been expressly for the Church and not for Cesare personally. So the
Venetians at once supplied Guidobaldo da Montefeltre with troops
wherewith to reconquer his dominions, and by the 24th he was master of
S. Leo. In the city of Urbino itself Ramires, the governor, held out as
long as possible, then beat a retreat to Cesena, whilst Valentinois's
partisans in Urbino were mercilessly slaughtered and their houses
pillaged.

Florence supported the Baglioni in the conquest of Magione from the
Borgias, and they aided Giacopo d'Appiano to repossess