int on these frivolities, and may you never
lose sight of your dignity; then people will not call you a vain
gallant among men. If this occurs again we shall be compelled to
show that it was contrary to our exhortation, and that it caused us
great pain; and our censure will not pass over you without causing
you to blush. We have always loved you and thought you worthy of
our protection as a man of an earnest and modest character.
Therefore, conduct yourself henceforth so that we may retain this
our opinion of you, and may behold in you only the example of a
well ordered life. Your years, which are not such as to preclude
improvement, permit us to admonish you paternally.

PETRIOLO, _June 11, 1460_.[3]

A few years later, when Paul II occupied the papal throne, the historian
Gasparino of Verona described Cardinal Borgia as follows: "He is
handsome; of a most glad countenance and joyous aspect, gifted with
honeyed and choice eloquence. The beautiful women on whom his eyes are
cast he lures to love him, and moves them in a wondrous way, more
powerfully than the magnet influences iron."

There are such organizations as Gasparino describes; they are men of the
physical and moral nature of Casanova and the Regent of Orleans.
Rodrigo's beauty was noted by many of his contemporaries even when he
was pope. In 1493 Hieronymus Portius described him as follows:
"Alexander is tall and neither light nor dark; his eyes are black and
his lips somewhat full. His health is robust, and he is able to bear any
pain or fatigue; he is wonderfully eloquent and a thorough man of the
world."[4]

The force of this happy organization lay, apparently, in the perfect
balance of all its powers. From it radiated the serene brightness of his
being, for nothing is more incorrect than the picture usually drawn of
this Borgia, showing him as a sinister monster. The celebrated Jason
Mainus, of Milan, calls attention to his "elegance of figure, his serene
brow, his kingly forehead, his countenance with its expression of
generosity and majesty, his genius, and the heroic beauty of his whole
presence."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Zurita, Anales de Aragon, v. 36.

[2] Zurita (iv, 55) says he died _sin dexar ninguna sucesion_.
Notwithstanding this, Cittadella, in his _Saggio di Albero Genealogico e
di memorie su la Familia Borgia_ (Turin, 1872), ascribes two children to
this Pedro Luis, Silvia and Cardinal Gio