time when they made his father Pope. He must
then have been about twenty, and was strong and active. He broke in
horses, was an expert fencer and shot, and killed bulls in the ring."

"That too?"

"He was a good Spaniard. In a court that cannot be seen from here, on
account of those thick panes, but on which these windows look, Caesar
Borgia fought bulls, and the Pope stood here to watch his son's
dexterity with the sword."

"What ruffians!" exclaimed Caesar, smiling.

The Englishman continued with the history of Borgia, his intrigues with
the King of France, the death of Lucrezia's husband, the assassinations
attributed to the Pope's son, the mysterious execution of Ramiro del
Orco, which made Machiavelli say that Caesar Borgia was the prince who
best knew how to make and unmake men, according to their merits; finally
the _coup d'etat_ at Sinigaglia with the _condottieri_.

By this time Caesar Moncada was very anxious to know more. These Borgias
interested him. His sympathies went out toward those great bandits who
dominated Rome and tried to get all Italy into their power, leaf by
leaf, like an artichoke. Their purpose struck him as a good one, almost
a moral one. The device, _Aut Caesar, aut nihil_, was worthy of a man of
energy and courage.

Kennedy seeing Caesar's interest, then recounted the scene at Cardinal
Adrian Corneto's country-house; Alexander's intention to give a supper
there to various Cardinals and poison them all with a wine that had
been put into three bottles, so as to inherit from them, the
superstitiousness of the Pope, who sent Cardinal Caraffa to the Vatican
for a golden box in which he kept his consecrated Host, from which he
was never separated; and the mistake of the chamberlain, who served the
poisoned wine to Caesar and his father.

"Here, to this very room, they brought the dying Pope," said Kennedy,
and pointed to a door, on whose marble lintel one may read: _Alexander
Borgia Valentin P. P._ "They say he passed eight days here between life
and death, before he did die, and that when his corpse was exposed, it
decomposed horribly."

Then Kennedy related the story of Caesar's trying to cure himself by the
strange method of being put inside of a mule just dead; his flight from
Rome, sick on a litter, with his soldiers, as far as the Romagna; his
imprisonment in the Castel Sant' Angelo; his capture by the Great
Captain; his efforts to escape from his prison at Medina del Campo; and
h