ing has been discovered which would
indicate that this beautiful young woman ever did engage in any love
affair. Even the report of the ambassador, who, writing to Ferrara, not
from Rome but from Venice, states that Lucretia had given birth to a
child stands alone. She had at that time been separated from her husband
Sforza a whole year. But even if we admit that this rumor was well
founded, and that Lucretia did engage in some illicit love affair, are
not these relations and slips frequent enough in all societies and at
all times? Even now nothing is more readily glossed over in the polite
world.

It is difficult to believe that Lucretia, in the midst of the depravity
of Rome, and in the environment in which she was placed, could have kept
herself spotless; but just as little will any unprejudiced person
believe that she was really guilty of that unmentionable crime. If it
were possible to conceive that a young woman could have the strength--a
strength beyond that of the most depraved and hardened man--to hide
behind a joyous exterior the moral perturbation which the most loathsome
crime in the world would certainly cause the subject, we should be
forced to admit that Lucretia Borgia possessed a power of dissimulation
which passed all human bounds. Nothing, however, charmed the Ferrarese
so much as the never failing, graceful joyousness of Alfonso's young
wife. Any woman of feeling can decide correctly whether--if Lucretia
were guilty of the crimes with which she was charged--she could have
appeared as she did, and whether the countenance which we behold in the
portrait of the bride of Alfonso d'Este in 1502 could be the face of the
inhuman fury described in Sannazzaro's epigram.

FOOTNOTES:

[84] Compare Sannazzaro's epitaph on Alexander VI with the epigram of
Guido Posthumus: In Tumulum Sexti.

[85] Cardinal Ferrari to Ercole, Rome, February 18, 1501. This is the
first of the letters regarding this subject in the archives of Modena.

[86] Ercole's letter to his ambassador in Florence, Manfredo Manfredi,
April 25, 1501. Archives of Modena.

[87] Ferrari to Ercole, May 1, 1501.

[88] Girolamo Saerati to Ercole, Rome, May 8, 1501.

[89] Bartolomeo de' Cavallieri, Ferrarese ambassador to France, to
Ercole, Chalons, May 26, 1501.

[90] At least such was the plan advocated by Monsignor de Trans, French
ambassador in Rome. Letter of Aldovrandus de Guidonibus to Duke Ercole,
Lugo, April 25, 1501. State archives