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Therefore, that they might serve their interests in the end, both king and cardinal served Cesare's in the meantime. The Duke of Valentinois's visit to Milan had served to increase the choler of Vitelli, who accounted that by this action Cesare had put him in disgrace with the King of France; and Vitelli cried out that thus was he repaid for having sought to make Cesare King of Tuscany.
To all who have read The Prince it will be clear that upon that ground alone of having brought Valentinois's justice into disrepute by the harshness which in Valentinois's name he practised Macchiavelli would have approved the execution of Ramiro.
To achieve their ends they united themselves to the Orsini, who were now in arms in Rome, their attempted reconciliation with Cesare having aborted. Valentinois's peril became imminent, and from the Vatican he withdrew for shelter to the Castle of Sant' Angelo, going by way of the underground passage built by his father.
For tongues must be wagging, and, where knowledge is lacking, speculation will soon usurp its place, and presently be invested with all the authority of "fact." Out of surmises touching that matter "which concerned the honour of the King of France" grew presently and contradictorily the rumour that Troche was gone to betray to France Valentinois's intention of going over to the Spanish side.
From Imola, Paolo Orsini rode to Fano on the 29th, and ordered his men to advance upon Urbino and seize the city in the Duke of Valentinois's name, proclaiming a pardon for all rebels who would be submissive. Guidobaldo and the ill-starred Lord of Faenza were the two exceptions in Romagna the only two who had known how to win the affections of their subjects.
He led his companions to the chamber where the Marescotti were confined, and there, more or less in cold blood, those four gentlemen were murdered for no better reason ostensibly than because it was suspected they had been in communication with their relatives in the Duke of Valentinois's army.
And Burchard tells us how some of Valentinois's men entered the Vatican all the gates of which were held by the ducal troops and, seizing Cardinal Casanova, they demanded, with a dagger at his throat and a threat to fling his corpse from the windows if he refused them, the Pope's keys.
And straightway the rumour spread of Valentinois's intended treachery, and the rumour was kept alive and swelled by Venice and Florence in pursuit of their never-ceasing policy of discrediting Cesare with King Louis, to the end that they might encompass his expedient ruin.
And just as the Pope's death was the subject of the wildest fictions which have survived until very recent days, so too, was Cesare's recovery. Again, it was the same Pietro Martire d'Anghiera who from Burgos wrote to inform Rome of what was taking place in the privacy of the Duke of Valentinois's apartments in the Vatican.
For great captains are not afforded the immunity enjoyed by priests and popes jointly with other wearers of the petticoat from the consequences of falsehood and violated trust. Fierce and bitter were Valentinois's reproaches of the Great Captain for this treachery as fierce and bitter as they were unavailing.
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