id that the heroic beauty of his whole body was given him by
Nature in order that he might adorn the seat of the Apostles with his
divine form, in the place of God! What blasphemy this was! but it shows
the moral level of the day. His intercourse with Vanozza Catanei was
open and notorious, and she was the mother of that Lucrezia Borgia whose
ill repute is dying a hard death in the face of modern attempts at
rehabilitation. His liaison with Giulia Farnese, known as _la bella
Giulia_, the lawful wife of Orsino Orsini, was no less conspicuous, and
these two women had a great influence upon him throughout his whole
lifetime. It had already been said of him: "He is handsome, of a most
glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with honeyed and choice
eloquence; the beautiful women on whom he casts his eyes are charmed to
love him, and he moves them in a wondrous way, more powerfully than the
magnet influences iron;" but this seduction in his manner cannot be
considered as merely an innocent result of his great personal beauty,
because his lustful disposition is well proved, and sensuality was
always his greatest vice. Symonds makes the statement that within the
sacred walls of the Vatican he maintained a harem in truly Oriental
fashion; and here were doubtless sent, from all parts of the papal
states, those daughters of Venus who were willing to minister to the
joys of His Holiness. To cap the climax, imagine the effrontery of a
pope who dared, in the face of the ecclesiastical rule enjoining
celibacy upon the priesthood, to parade his delinquencies before the
eyes of all the world, and seat himself in state, for a solemn pageant
at Saint Peter's, with his daughter Lucrezia upon one side of his
throne and his daughter-in-law Sancia upon the other! It was once said
by a witty and epigrammatic Italian that Church affairs were so corrupt
that the interests of morality demanded the marriage rather than the
celibacy of the clergy, and it would appear that this remark has a
certain pertinency anent the present situation. To illustrate in what
way such delinquency was made a matter of jest, the following story is
related. At the time of the French invasion, during the early days of
Alexander's pontificate, Giulia and Girolama Farnese, two members of
what we perhaps may call the pope's domestic circle, were captured,
together with their duenna, Adriana di Mila, by a certain Monseigneur
d'Allegre, who was in the suite of the French ki