They left the Vatican, crossed the Piazza di San Pietro, and drew near the river.
As they passed in front of the Castel Sant’ Angelo, Kennedy said:
“Alexander VI shut himself up in this castle to weep for the Duke of Gandia. From one of those windows he watched the funeral procession of his son, whom they were carrying to Santa Maria del Popolo. According to old Italian custom they bore the corpse in an open casket. The funeral was at night, and two hundred men with torches lighted the way. When the cortège set foot on this bridge, the Pope’s retinue saw him draw back with horror, and cover his face, crying out sharply.”
XIX. CÆSAR’S REFLECTIONS
“I have had the curiosity,” Cæsar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, “to inform myself about the life of the Borgias, and going on from one to another, I reached Saint Francis Borgia; and from Saint Francis I have gone backwards to Saint Ignatius Loyola.
“The parallelism between the doings of Cæsar Borgia and of Iñigo de Loyola surprised me; what one tried to do in the sphere of action, the other did in the sphere of thought. These twin Spanish figures, both odious to the masses, have given its direction to the Church; one, Loyola, through the impulse to spiritual power; the other, Cæsar Borgia, through the impulse to temporal power.
“One may say that Spain gave Papal Rome its thought and activity, as it gave the Rome of the Cæsars also its thought and activity, through Seneca and Trajan.
“Really it is curious to see the traces that remain in Rome of that Basque, Iñigo. That half farceur, half ruffian, who had the characteristics of a modern anarchist, was a genius for organization. Bakunin and Mazzini are poor devils beside him. The Church still lives through Loyola. He was her last reformer.
“The Society of Jesus is the knot of the whole Catholic scaffolding; the Jesuits know that on the day when this knot, which their Society forms, is cut or pulled open, the whole frame-work of out-of-date ideas and lies, which defends the Vatican, will come down with a terrible noise.