ward
tale--to present him not as a villain of melodrama, not a monster,
ludicrous, grotesque, impossible, but as human being, a cold, relentless
egotist, it is true, using men for his own ends, terrible and even
treacherous in his reprisals, swift as a panther and as cruel where his
anger was aroused, yet with certain elements of greatness: a splendid
soldier, an unrivalled administrator, a man pre-eminently just, if
merciless in that same justice.

To present Cesare Borgia thus in a plain straightforward tale at this
time of day, would be to provoke the scorn and derision of those who
have made his acquaintance in the pages of that eminent German scholar,
Ferdinand Gregorovius, and of some other writers not quite so eminent
yet eminent enough to serve serious consideration. Hence has it been
necessary to examine at close quarters the findings of these great ones,
and to present certain criticisms of those same findings. The author is
overwhelmingly conscious of the invidious quality of that task; but he
is no less conscious of its inevitability if this tale is to be told at
all.

Whilst the actual sources of historical evidence shall be examined in
the course of this narrative, it may be well to examine at this stage
the sources of the popular conceptions of the Borgias, since there will
be no occasion later to allude to them.

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance,
it may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to
be one of the most valued and valuable expressions of the literary art.
To render and maintain it so, however, it is necessary that certain
well-defined limits should be set upon the licence which its writers
are to enjoy; it is necessary that the work should be honest work; that
preparation for it should be made by a sound, painstaking study of the
period to be represented, to the end that a true impression may first be
formed and then conveyed. Thus, considering how much more far-reaching
is the novel than any other form of literature, the good results that
must wait upon such endeavours are beyond question. The neglect of
them--the distortion of character to suit the romancer's ends, the like
distortion of historical facts, the gross anachronisms arising out of
a lack of study, have done much to bring the historical romance into
disrepute. Many writers frankly make no pretence--leastways none that
can be discerned--of aiming at historical precision;