g, as her representative, that same Niccolo Macchiavelli who had
earlier accompanied Soderini on a similar mission to Valentinois, and
who had meanwhile been advanced to the dignity of Secretary of State.

Macchiavelli has left us, in his dispatches to his Government, the
most precious and valuable information concerning that period of Cesare
Borgia's history during which he was with the duke on the business of
his legation. Not only is it the rare evidence of an eye-witness that
Macchiavelli affords us, but the evidence, as we have said, of one
endowed with singular acumen and an extraordinary gift of psychological
analysis. The one clear and certain inference to be drawn, not only from
those dispatches, but from the Florentine secretary's later writings,
is that, at close quarters with Cesare Borgia, a critical witness of his
methods, he conceived for him a transcending admiration which was later
to find its fullest expression in his immortal book The Prince--a
book, remember, compiled to serve as a guide in government to Giuliano
de'Medici, the feeble brother of Pope Leo X, a book inspired by Cesare
Borgia, who is the model prince held up by Macchiavelli for emulation.

Does it serve any purpose, in the face of this work from the pen of the
acknowledged inventor of state-craft, to describe Cesare's conquest
of the Romagna by opprobrious epithets and sweeping statements of
condemnation and censure--statements kept carefully general, and never
permitted to enter into detail which must destroy their own ends and
expose their falsehood?

Gregorovius, in this connection, is as full of contradictions as any
man must be who does not sift out the truth and rigidly follow it in his
writings. Consider the following scrupulously translated extracts from
his Geschichte der Stadt Rom:

(a) "Cesare departed from Rome to resume his bloody work in the
Romagna."

(b) "...the frightful deeds performed by Cesare on both sides of the
Apennines. He assumes the semblance of an exterminating angel, and
performs such hellish iniquities that we can only shudder at the
contemplation of the evil of which human nature is capable."

And now, pray, consider and compare with those the following excerpt
from the very next page of that same monumental work:

"Before him [Cesare] cities trembled; the magistrates prostrated
themselves in the dust; sycophantic courtiers praised him to the stars.
Yet it is undeniable that his government was e