prevail as had never before been known
in Rome.

Infessura tells us how, in the very month of his election, he appointed
inspectors of prisons and four commissioners to administer justice,
and that he himself gave audience on Tuesdays and settled disputes,
concluding, "et justitiam mirabili modo facere coepit."

He paid all salaries promptly--a striking departure, it would seem,
from what had been usual under his predecessor--and the effect of his
improved and strenuous legislation was shortly seen in the diminished
prices of commodities.

He was crowned Pope on August 6, on the steps of the Basilica of
St. Peter, by the Cardinal-Archdeacon Piccolomini. The ceremony was
celebrated with a splendour worthy of the splendid figure that was its
centre. Through the eyes of Michele Ferno--despite his admission that
he is unable to convey a worthy notion of the spectacle--you may see the
gorgeous procession to the Lateran in which Alexander VI showed himself
to the applauding Romans; the multitude of richly adorned men, gay and
festive; the seven hundred priests and prelates, with their familiars
the splendid cavalcade of knights and nobles of Rome; the archers and
Turkish horsemen, and the Palatine Guard, with its great halberds and
flashing shields; the twelve white horses, with their golden bridles,
led by footmen; and then Alexander himself on a snow-white horse,
"serene of brow and of majestic dignity," his hand uplifted--the
Fisherman's Ring upon its forefinger--to bless the kneeling populace.
The chronicler flings into superlatives when he comes to praise the
personal beauty of the man, his physical vigour and health, "which go to
increase the veneration shown him."

Thus in the brilliant sunshine of that Italian August, amid the plaudits
of assembled Rome, amid banners and flowers, music and incense, the
flash of steel and the blaze of decorations with the Borgian arms
everywhere displayed--or, a grazing steer gules--Alexander VI passes to
the Vatican, the aim and summit of his vast ambition.

Friends and enemies alike have sung the splendours of that coronation,
and the Bull device--as you can imagine--plays a considerable part in
those verses, be they paeans or lampoons. The former allude to Borgia as
"the Bull," from the majesty and might of the animal that was displayed
upon their shield; the latter render it the subject of much scurrilous
invective, to which it lends itself as readily. And thereafter, in
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