He partakes of but a single dish, though this must be a rich one.
It is, consequently, a bore to dine with him. Ascanio and others,
especially Cardinal Monreale, who formerly were his Holiness's
table companions, and Valenza too, broke off this companionship
because his parsimony displeased them, and avoided it whenever and
however they could.[45]

The doings in the Vatican furnished ground for endless gossip, which had
long been current in Rome. It was related in Venice, in October,
1496, that the Duke of Gandia had brought a Spanish woman to his father,
with whom he lived, and an account was given of a crime which is almost
incredible, although it was related by the Venetian ambassador and other
persons.[46]

[Illustration: SAVONAROLA.

From a painting by Fra Bartolommeo]

It was not long before Donna Sancia caused herself to be freely gossiped
about. She was beautiful and thoughtless; she appreciated her position
as the daughter of a king. From the most vicious of courts she was
transplanted into the depravity of Rome as the wife of an immature boy.
It was said that her brothers-in-law Gandia and Caesar quarreled over her
and possessed her in turn, and that young nobles and cardinals like
Ippolito d'Este could boast of having enjoyed her favors.

Savonarola may have had these nepot-courts in mind when, from the pulpit
of S. Marco in Florence, he declaimed in burning words against the Roman
Sodom.

Even if the voice of the great preacher, whose words were filling all
Italy, did not reach Lucretia's ears, from her own experience she must
have known how profligate was the world in which she lived. About her
she saw vice shamelessly displayed or cloaked in sacerdotal robes; she
was conscious of the ambition and avarice which hesitated at no crime;
she beheld a religion more pagan than paganism itself, and a church
service in which the sacred actors,--with whose conduct behind the
scenes she was perfectly familiar,--were the priests, the cardinals, her
brother Caesar, and her own father. All this Lucretia beheld, but they
are wrong who believe that she or others like her saw and regarded it as
we do now, or as a few pure-minded persons of that age did; for
familiarity always dulls the average person's perception of the truth.
In that age the conceptions of religion, of decency, and of morality
were entirely different from those of to-day. When the rupture between
the Middle Ages and its as