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In various places in the interior, and also without, on the towers of the stronghold, the same arms may be seen carved in stone. There are also two stones, with the arms very carefully chiseled, set in the walls of the entrance hall of the town house of Nepi, which were originally in the castle where they had been placed by Lucretia's orders.
The Borgia arms and those of the house of Aragon, which Lucretia, as Duchess of Biselli, had adopted, are united under a ducal crown. Lonely Nepi, which now has only 2,500 inhabitants, had but few more in the year 1500.
She saw, however, that the lives of her kinsmen in Rome were in danger; there were her sick brother, her child Rodrigo, and Giovanni, Duke of Nepi; while the Orsini, burning with a desire to wipe out old scores, were hastening thither to avenge themselves for the blood of their kinsmen. She besought her father-in-law to help Cæsar and to preserve his estates for him.
As the places through which they passed would be subjected to very great expense if the entire cavalcade stopped, the retinue was sometimes divided, each part taking a different route. The Pope's brief to the Priors of Nepi shows to what imposition the people were subjected. DEAR SONS: Greeting and the Apostolic Blessing.
Mars then hastens to Naples to stir up war and confusion, while Pallas goes to Nepi, and there appears to the dying Cesare under the form of Alexander VI. After giving him the good advice to submit to his fate and be satisfied with the glory of his name, the papal goddess vanishes 'like a bird.
The last dated letters, which are of October 31st and November 2d, are devoted to unimportant domestic affairs; they show that Lucretia was in Nepi as late as November. Another undated letter to the same Vincenzo Giordano refers to her return to Rome; it purposely contains obscurities which it is now impossible to decipher and fictitious names which had been agreed upon with her servant.
For the same Lord of Nepi he decorated a large and very beautiful bathroom with many scenes and figures executed in fresco.
Afterwards Signor Pier Luigi Farnese, who had been made Lord of Nepi at that time, wishing to adorn that city with new buildings and pictures, took Francesco into his service, giving him rooms in the Belvedere; and there Francesco painted for him on large canvases some scenes in gouache of the actions of Alexander the Great, which were afterwards carried into execution and woven into tapestries in Flanders.
All might have been well if pope Paul's successor had been regularly chosen; but a layman Constantine was elected by a rabble at the instigation of his brother Toto of Nepi.
About this time Lucretia was reminded of her life in Rome by a member of her family who was very near to her, Giovanni Borgia, the mysterious Infante of Rome, formerly Duke of Nepi and Camerino, and companion in destiny of the little Rodrigo who died in Bari.
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