their
number, were lost on the road For this extravagance Caesar was greatly
blamed, for it was thought an audacious thing to put on his horses' feet
a metal of which king's crowns are made.

But all this pomp had no effect on the lady for whose sake it had been
displayed; for when Dona Carlota was told that Caesar Bargia had come to
France in the hope of becoming her husband, she replied simply that she
would never take a priest far her husband, and, moreover, the son of a
priest; a man who was not only an assassin, but a fratricide; not only a
man of infamous birth, but still more infamous in his morals and his
actions.

But, in default of the haughty lady of Aragon, Caesar soon found another
princess of noble blood who consented to be his wife: this was
Mademoiselle d'Albret, daughter of the King of Navarre. The marriage,
arranged on condition that the pope should pay 200,000 ducats dowry to
the bride, and should make her brother cardinal, was celebrated on the
10th of May; and on the Whitsunday following the Duke of Valentois
received the order of St. Michael, an order founded by Louis XI, and
esteemed at this period as the highest in the gift of the kings of
France. The news of this marriage, which made an alliance with Louis XII
certain, was received with great joy by the pope, who at once gave orders
far bonfires and illuminations all over the town.

Louis XII was not only grateful to the pope for dissolving his marriage
with Jeanne of France and authorizing his union with Anne of Brittany,
but he considered it indispensable to his designs in Italy to have the
pope as his ally. So he promised the Duke of Valentinois to put three
hundred lances at his disposal, as soon as he had made an entry into
Milan, to be used to further his own private interests, and against
whomsoever he pleased except only the allies of France. The conquest of
Milan should be undertaken so soon as Louis felt assured of the support
of the Venetians, or at least of their neutrality, and he had sent them
ambassadors authorised to promise in his name the restoration of Cremona
and Ghiera d'Adda when he had completed the conquest of Lombardy.

CHAPTER IX

Everything from without was favouring Alexander's encroaching policy,
when he was compelled to turn his eyes from France towards the centre of
Italy: in Florence dwelt a man, neither duke, nor king, nor soldier, a
man whose power was in his genius, whose armour was his purity, wh