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However, when men of talent cease to be hungry they generally become snobs, and will take the fly of the season with as much voracity as any trout in May. The literary and musical receptions at the Palazzo Riario took place in the portico that opened upon the gardens in those days; for the whole palace was afterwards rebuilt by the Corsini, and many parts of it were changed.
She had begun by answering the Pope's Bull of attainder with the statement that, far from owing the Holy See the tribute which it claimed, the Holy See was actually in her debt, her husband, Count Girolamo Riario, having been a creditor of the Church for the provisions made by him in his office of Captain-General of the Pontifical forces.
He had proved the friend even of the enemies of his own country, when once they had passed from the scene of conflict, as, for example, when he dared Girolamo Riario to raise a finger in the direction of dispossessing the son of the Pope's general, Ruberto Malatesta, of his Rimini estates.
Soon after this he made a beautiful, sleeping Cupid, and when the young Lorenzo de Medici saw it he advised Michael Angelo to bury it in the ground for a season, and thus make it look like an antique marble; after this was done, Lorenzo sent it to Rome and sold it to the Cardinal Riario, and gave the sculptor thirty ducats.
There may be some truth in the story of that terrible white powder used by the Borgias, which did its work at the end of a definite period, and it is possible that it was really a 'venenum atterminatum' which the Prince of Salerno handed to the Cardinal of Aragon, with the words: 'In a few days you will die, because your father, King Ferrante, wished to trample upon us all. But the poisoned letter which Caterina Riario sent to Pope Alexander VI would hardly have caused his death even if he had read it; and when Alfonso the Great was warned by his physicians not to read in the Livy which Cosimo de' Medici had presented to him, he told them with justice not to talk like fools.
As soon, however, as it seemed safe to do so, he returned to Florence; and to this period belongs the statue of the "Sleeping Cupid," which was sold as an antique to the Cardinal Raffaello Riario.
Why, the whole city would be her slave eh, and more than the city! Bentivoglio of Bologna, Il Moro of Milan, Ordelaffi, Manfredi, Farnese, the Borgia, the Gonzaga, D'Este of Ferrara, Riario, Montefeltro, Orsini by the Saint of Padua, he would face them each with his beautiful wife; charm them, turn their heads, and then ping! Let the neatest wrist win the odd trick.
In those first years of her permanent residence in Rome she was rich, for in voluntarily abdicating the throne she had reserved to herself a liberal income, which afterwards dwindled to very little, and she kept up a considerable state in the Palazzo Riario, that overlooks the river from the Trastevere side.
Girolamo Riario entered into his views. So did Francesco Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, who had private reasons for hostility. These men found no difficulty in winning over Sixtus to their plot; nor is it possible to purge the Pope of participation in what followed.
He exercised a deep influence upon the religious turn which her nature took during this the second period of her life. The youthful Duchess of Biselli certainly enjoyed the lively society of the cultured and gallant ecclesiastics about her Cardinals Medici, Riario, Orsini, Cesarini, and Farnese not to mention the Borgias and the Spanish prelates.
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