me out from the retreat were she was
weeping for the Duke of Gandia, that she might console her father. At
her voice the door did really open, and it was only then that the Duke of
Segovia, who had been kneeling almost a whole day at the threshold,
begging His Holiness to take heart, could enter with servants bearing
wine and food.

The pope remained alone with Lucrezia for three days and nights; then he
reappeared in public, outwardly calm, if not resigned; for Guicciardini
assures us that his daughter had made him understand how dangerous it
would be to himself to show too openly before the assassin, who was
coming home, the immoderate love he felt for his victim.

CHAPTER VIII

Caesar remained at Naples, partly to give time to the paternal grief to
cool down, and partly to get on with another business he had lately been
charged with, nothing else than a proposition of marriage between
Lucrezia and Don Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bicelli and Prince of
Salerno, natural son of Alfonso II and brother of Dona Sancha. It was
true that Lucrezia was already married to the lord of Pesaro, but she was
the daughter of an father who had received from heaven the right of
uniting and disuniting. There was no need to trouble about so trifling a
matter: when the two were ready to marry, the divorce would be effected.
Alexander was too good a tactician to leave his daughter married to a
son-in-law who was becoming useless to him.

Towards the end of August it was announced that the ambassador was coming
back to Rome, having accomplished his mission to the new king to his
great satisfaction. And thither he returned an the 5th of
September,--that is, nearly three months after the Duke of Gandia's
death,--and on the next day, the 6th, from the church of Santa Maria
Novella, where, according to custom, the cardinals and the Spanish and
Venetian ambassadors were awaiting him on horseback at the door, he
proceeded to the Vatican, where His Holiness was sitting; there he
entered the consistory, was admitted by the pope, and in accordance with
the usual ceremonial received his benediction and kiss; then, accompanied
once more in the same fashion by the ambassadors and cardinals, he was
escorted to his own apartments. Thence he proceeded to, the pope's, as
soon as he was left alone; for at the consistory they had had no speech
with one another, and the father and son had a hundred things to talk
about, but of these the Duke of