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Then it was that he took up the deadly weapon of calumny, putting it secretly about that Cesare was the murderer of his brother, spurred to it by worldly ambition and by other motives which involved the principal members of the family. Men do not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies.
Fair Rosamond may have drunk from it while the Queen watched her. At some voluptuous feast, Caesar Borgia and his sister, sitting crowned with roses, side by side, may have pressed it upon a reluctant guest, who had, perhaps, a treasure of his own. I dare swear Rene, the Florentine, hath fingered many such a goblet before it went to whom Catherine de' Medici delighted to honor."
With a cynicism which would have been revolting if it had not been almost childlike in its simplicity, he discharged his servants, sold his furniture, gave up his apartment in the Corso, and moved back to his old quarters in the Palazzetto Borgia. But he did not acknowledge Gloria's note in any other way.
"That little she-devil who has taken a fancy to Will," said Fred with a grin, "is capable of more atrocities than all the Turks between here and Stamboul! She looks to me like Santanita, Cleopatra, Salome, Caesar's wife, and all the Borgia ladies rolled in one. There's something added, though, that they lacked." "Youth," said I. "Beauty. Athletic grace. Sinuous charm."
Given in Rome, in St. Peter's, under the papal seal, August 8, 1499. Lucretia left Rome for her new home the same day. She set out with a large retinue, and accompanied by her brother Don Giuffrè; Fabio Orsini, now the consort of Girolama Borgia, her kinswoman; and a company of archers.
The triumph of the French in 1500 was also the highest point of the fortunes of their ally, Caesar Borgia, who seemed for a while to be completely successful. In this year Louis made a treaty at Granada, by which he and Ferdinand the Catholic agreed to despoil Frederick of Naples; and in 1501 Louis made a second expedition into Italy.
It was the half-allegorical, half-dramatic representation of the reigning Borgia pope and his children; it was the rude and hesitating moulding into dramatic shape of those terrible rumours of simony and poison, of lust and of violence, of mysterious death and abominable love, which had met the invaders as they had first set their feet in Italy; which had become louder and clearer with every onward step through the peninsula, and now circulated around them, with frightful distinctness, in the very capital of Christ's vicar on earth.
The magistrates, fearing a trap, hesitated for a moment to believe the truth, which soon, however, became quite evident. Valdez, flying himself from Leyderdorp, had ordered Colonel Borgia to retire with all his troops from Lammen. Thus, the Spaniards had retreated at the very moment that an extraordinary accident had laid bare a whole side of the city for their entrance.
From the garden they went, by a path between trees, to the bastion of Paul III, a little terrace, from which they could see the Tiber at their feet, and opposite the panorama of Rome and its environs, in the light of a beautiful spring sunshine.... The next day was one of the days for visiting the Borgia Apartment.
It was specially stated that of this sum eleven thousand timbres should consist of the amount bequeathed by the will of the deceased Don Pedro Luis de Borgia, Duke of Gandia, to his sister for her marriage portion, while eight thousand were given her by her other brothers, Cæsar and Giuffrè, for the same purpose, presumably also from the estate left by the brother.
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