aesar.

So, as this business was already far advanced on the day when Caesar
doffed his scarlet and donned a secular garb, thus fulfilling the
ambition so long cherished, when the lord of Villeneuve, sent by Louis
and commissioned to bring Caesar to France, presented himself before the
ex-cardinal on his arrival at Rome, the latter, with his usual
extravagance of luxury and the kindness he knew well how to bestow on
those he needed, entertained his guest for a month, and did all the
honours of Rome. After that, they departed, preceded by one of the
pope's couriers, who gave orders that every town they passed through was
to receive them with marks of honour and respect. The same order had
been sent throughout the whole of France, where the illustrious visitors
received so numerous a guard, and were welcomed by a populace so eager to
behold them, that after they passed through Paris, Caesar's
gentlemen-in-waiting wrote to Rome that they had not seen any trees in
France, or houses, or walls, but only men, women and sunshine.

The king, on the pretext of going out hunting, went to meet his guest two
leagues outside the town. As he knew Caesar was very fond of the name of
Valentine, which he had used as cardinal, and still continued to employ
with the title of Count, although he had resigned the archbishopric which
gave him the name, he there and then bestowed an him the investiture of
Valence, in Dauphine, with the title of Duke and a pension of 20,000
francs; then, when he had made this magnificent gift and talked with him
for nearly a couple of hours, he took his leave, to enable him to prepare
the splendid entry he was proposing to make.

It was Wednesday, the 18th of December 1498, when Caesar Borgia entered
the town of Chinon, with pomp worthy of the son of a pope who is about to
marry the daughter of a king. The procession began with four-and-twenty
mules, caparisoned in red, adorned with escutcheons bearing the duke's
arms, laden with carved trunks and chests inlaid with ivory and silver;
after them came four-and-twenty mare, also caparisoned, this time in the
livery of the King of France, yellow and red; next after these came ten
other mules, covered in yellow satin with red crossbars; and lastly
another ten, covered with striped cloth of gold, the stripes alternately
raised and flat gold.

Behind the seventy mules which led the procession there pranced sixteen
handsome battle-horses, led by equerries who mar