t I entered the great man's
closet.

He received me in a manner calculated to set me at my ease, and yet
there was about him a something that overawed me. Cesare Borgia,
Cardinal of Valencia, was then in his twenty-third year, for all
that there hung about him the semblance of a greater age, just as his
cardinalitial robes lent him the appearance of a height far above the
middle stature that was his own. His face was pale and framed in a silky
auburn beard; his nose was aquiline and strong; his eyes the keenest
that I have ever seen; his forehead lofty and intelligent. He seemed
pervaded by an air of feverish restlessness, something surpassing the
vivida vis animi, something that marked him to discerning eyes for a man
of incessant action of body and of mind.

"My sister tells me," he said in greeting, "that you are willing to take
service under me, Messer Biancomonte."

"Such was the hope that guided me to Rome, Most Excellent," I answered
him.

Surprise flashed into his eyes, and was gone as quickly as it had come.
His thin lips parted in a smile, whose meaning was inscrutable.

"As some reward for the safe delivery of the letter you brought me from
her?" he questioned mildly.

"Precisely, Illustrious," I answered in all frankness.

His open hand smote the table of wood-mosaics at which he sat.

"Praised be Heaven!" he cried. "You seem to promise that I shall have in
you a follower who deals in truth."

"Could your Excellency, to whom my real name is known, expect ought else
of one who bears it--however unworthily?"

There was amusement in his glance.

"Can you still swagger it, after having worn that livery for three
years?" he asked, and his lean forefinger pointed at my hideous motley
of red and black and yellow.

I flushed and hung my head, and--as if to mock that very expression
of my shame--the bells on my cap gave forth a silvery tinkle at the
movement.

"Excellency, spare me," I murmured. "Did you know all my miserable story
you would be merciful. Did you know with what joy I turned my back on
the Court of Pesaro--"

"Aye," he broke in mockingly, "when Giovanni Sforza threatened to have
you hanged for the overboldness of your tongue. Not until then did it
occur to you to turn from the shameful life in which the best years
of your manhood were being wasted. There! Just now I commended your
truthfulness; but the truth that dwells in you is no more, it seems,
than the truth we may look for in t