d benefices, as well as every other ecclesiastical dignity
and preferment that had been accorded him. The cardinals, deferring to
Caesar's wishes, gave a unanimous vote, and the pope, as we may suppose,
like a good father, not wishing to force his son's inclinations,
accepted his resignation, and yielded to the petition; thus Caesar
put off the scarlet robe, which was suited to him, says his historian
Tommaso Tommasi, in one particular only--that it was the colour of
blood.

In truth, the resignation was a pressing necessity, and there was no
time to lose. Charles VIII one day after he had came home late and tired
from the hunting-field, had bathed his head in cold water; and going
straight to table, had been struck dawn by an apoplectic seizure
directly after his supper; and was dead, leaving the throne to the good
Louis XII, a man of two conspicuous weaknesses, one as deplorable as
the other: the first was the wish to make conquests; the second was
the desire to have children. Alexander, who was on the watch far all
political changes, had seen in a moment what he could get from Louis
XII's accession to the throne, and was prepared to profit by the fact
that the new king of France needed his help for the accomplishment
of his twofold desire. Louis needed, first, his temporal aid in an
expedition against the duchy of Milan, on which, as we explained before,
he had inherited claims from Valentina Visconti, his grandmother; and,
secondly, his spiritual aid to dissolve his marriage with Jeanne, the
daughter of Louis XI; a childless and hideously deformed woman, whom
he had only married by reason of the great fear he entertained far her
father. Now Alexander was willing to do all this far Louis XII and
to give in addition a cardinal's hat to his friend George d'Amboise,
provided only that the King of France would use his influence in
persuading the young Dona Carlota, who was at his court, to marry his
son Caesar.

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 de