of its deliberate adaptation of all the means in his power to one end—­the elevation of his family.  His spiritual authority, the wealth of the Church, the honors of the Holy College, the arts of an assassin, the diplomacy of a despot, were all devoted systematically and openly to the purpose in view.  Whatever could be done to weaken Italy by foreign invasions and internal discords, so as to render it a prey for his poisonous son, he attempted.  When Louis XII. made his infamous alliance with Ferdinand the Catholic for the spoliation of the house of Aragon in Naples, the Pope gladly gave it his sanction.  The two kings quarreled over their prey:  then Alexander fomented their discord in order that Cesare might have an opportunity of carrying on his operations in Tuscany unchecked.  Patriotism in his breast, whether the patriotism of a born Spaniard or the patriotism of an Italian potentate, was as dead as Christianity.  To make profit for the house of Borgia by fraud, sacrilege, and the dismemberment of nations, was the Papal policy.

    [1] See Chapter VI.

[2] Their father, Galeotto Manfredi, had been murdered in 1488 by their mother, Francesca Bentivogli.  Of Astorre’s death Guicciardini writes:  ’Astorre, che era minore di diciotto anni e di forma eccellente ... condotto a Roma, saziata prima (secondo che si disse) la libidine di qualcuno, fu occultamente insieme con un suo fratello naturale privato della vita.’  Nardi (Storie Florentine, lib. iv. 13) credits Cesare with the violation and murder of the boy.  How far, we may ask, were these dark crimes of violence actuated by astrological superstition?  This question is raised by Burckhardt (p. 363) apropos of Sigismondo Malatesta’s assault upon his son, and Pier Luigi Farnese’s violation of the Bishop of Fano.  To a temperament like Alexander’s, however, mere lust enhanced by cruelty, and seasoned with the joy of insult to an enemy, was a sufficient motive for the commission of monstrous crime.

It is wearisome to continue to the end the catalogue of his misdoings.  We are relieved when at last the final crash arrives.  The two Borgias, so runs the legend of their downfall, invited themselves to dine with the Cardinal Adriano of Corneto in a vineyard of the Vatican belonging to their host.  Thither by the hands of Alexander’s butler they previously conveyed some poisoned wine.  By mistake, or by the contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent, they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim.  Nearly all contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio, and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his masters in Venice that the Pope’s physician ascribed his illness to apoplexy.[2] The season was