The court was large, with a fountain of four streams in the middle. “Life then must have been more intense than now,” said Cæsar.
“Who knows? Perhaps it was the same as now,” replied Kennedy.
“And what does history, exact history, say of these Borgias?”
“Of Pope Alexander VI it says that he had his children in wedlock; that he was a good administrator; that the people were content with him; that the influence of Spain was justifiable, because he was Spanish; that the story of the poisonings does not seem certain; and that he himself could hardly have died of poison, but rather of a malarial fever.”
“And about Lucrezia?”
“Of Lucrezia it says that she was a woman like those of her period; that there are no proofs for belief in her incests and her poisonings; and that her first marriages, which were never really consummated, were nothing more than political moves of her father and her brother’s.”
“And about Cæsar?”
“Cæsar is the one member of the family who appears really terrible. His device, Aut Cæsar, aut nihil, was not a chance phrase, but the irrevocable decision to be a king or to be nothing.”
“That, at least, is not a mystification,” murmured Cæsar.
IN FRONT OF THE CASTEL SANT’ ANGELO