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Reading these elucubrations of Alfonso's, one feels that the saint has pondered long and lovingly upon themes like an et quando peccata sint oscula or de tactu et adspectu corporis; he writes with all the authority of an expert whose richly-varied experiences in the confessional have been amplified and irradiated by divine inspiration.
Alfonso's writings is positively approved; and secondly it is not said that there are no faults in what he has written, but nothing which comes under the ecclesiastical censura, which is something very definite.
The razo further relates the touching scene to which we have already referred when Bertran moved Henry II. to clemency by a reference to the death of the "young king." The account of Alfonso's supposed treachery is probably no less unhistorical: the siege lasted only a week and it is unlikely that the besiegers would have been reduced to want in so short a time.
Charles, however, was too much intent on his own plans for the conquest of Naples to pay any heed to these proposals, and the only result of Alfonso's intrigues was to strengthen the alliance between France and Milan.
Lucrezia arrived the same evening: she knew her father and brother too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded.
"Out of all the bounds of nature and feminine modesty," said Alister. "Of your grandmother's nature and modesty, maybe," retorted Dennis. "But she's no gayer than the birds of the neighbourhood, anyway, and she's as neat, which is more than ye can say for many a young lady that's not so black in the face." In short, Dennis approved of Alfonso's bride, and I think the lady was conscious of it.
Alfonso's Life, that he, who has the repute of being so lax a moralist, had one of the most scrupulous and anxious of consciences himself.
It was now Alfonso's turn to run from the bull, Caesar's to fight him: the young men changed parts, and when four mules had reluctantly dragged the dead bull from the arena, and the valets and other servants of His Holiness had scattered sand over the places that were stained with blood, Alfonso mounted a magnificent Andalusian steed of Arab origin, light as the wind of Sahara that had wedded with his mother, while Caesar, dismounting, retired in his turn, to reappear at the moment when Alfonso should be meeting the same danger from which he had just now rescued him.
In spite of the compliments that were exchanged on both sides upon his accession, Alfonso's enmity to Lodovico Sforza was well known at Naples, and the Milanese ambassador, Antonio Stanga, warned Lodovico to beware of assassins and prisoners, since, to his certain knowledge, the "new king has paid large sums of money to several Neapolitans of bad repute, who have been sent to Milan on some evil errand."
The invasion of a Moorish host in Spain, under the eminent Caliph Jusef Ben Taxfin, chief of the Almoravides and conqueror of Morocco; the rapid subjugation of the independent Emirs, and the defeat of Alfonso's army at the battle of Zalaka, in 1087, recalled the Castilians to a sense of Rodrigo's worth.
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