ere set by man a thousand leagues
asunder. Yet religion still sat upon the alabaster throne of Peter, and
in the filthy straw of the meanest Calabrian confessional. And still
deeper remained a blind devoted superstition. Vitellozzo Vitelli, as
Machiavelli tells us, while being strangled by Caeesar Borgia's assassin,
implored his murderer to procure for him the absolution of that
murderer's father. Gianpaolo Baglioni, who reigned by parricide and
lived in incest, was severely blamed by the Florentines for not killing
Pope Julius II. when the latter was his guest at Perugia. And when
Gabrino Fondato, the tyrant of Cremona, was on the scaffold, his only
regret was that when he had taken his guests, the Pope and Emperor, to
the top of the Cremona tower, four hundred feet high, his nerve failed
him and he did not push them both over. Upon this anarchy of religion,
morals, and conduct breathed suddenly the inspiring breath of Pagan
antiquity which seemed to the Italian mind to find its finest climax in
tyrannicide. There is no better instance than in the plot of the Pazzi
at Florence. Francesco Pazzi and Bernardo Bandini decided to kill
Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici in the cathedral at the moment of the
elevation of the Host. They naturally took the priest into their
confidence. They escorted Giuliano to the Duomo, laughing and talking,
and playfully embraced him--to discover if he wore armour under his
clothes. Then they killed him at the moment appointed.

[Sidenote: Pagan influence.]

Nor were there any hills from which salvation might be looked for.
Philosophy, poetry, science, expressed themselves in terms of
materialism. Faith and hope are ever the last survivors in the life of a
man or of a nation. But in Italy these brave comforters were at their
latest breath. It is perhaps unfair to accept in full the judgment of
Northern travellers. The conditions, training, needs of England and
Germany were different. In these countries courage was a necessity, and
good faith a paying policy. Subtlety could do little against a
two-handed sword in the hands of an angry or partially intoxicated
giant. Climate played its part as well as culture, and the crude
pleasures and vices of the North seemed fully as loathsome to the
refined Italian as did the tortuous policy and the elaborate infamies of
the South to their rough invaders. Alone, perhaps, among the nations of
Europe the Italians had never understood or practised chivalry, s