rought that
they were to enter by the Porta del Popolo.

The entrance of the Ferrarese into Rome was the most theatrical event
that occurred during the reign of Alexander VI. Processions were the
favorite spectacles of the Middle Ages; State, Church, and society
displayed their wealth and power in magnificent cavalcades. The horse
was symbolic of the world's strength and magnificence, but with the
disappearance of knighthood it lost its place in the history of
civilization. How the love of form and color of the people of Italy--the
home of processions--has changed was shown in Rome, July 2, 1871, when
Victor Emmanuel entered his new capital. Had this episode--one of the
weightiest in the whole history of Italy--occurred during the
Renaissance, it would have been made the occasion of a magnificent
triumph. The entrance into Rome of the first king of united Italy was
made, however, in a few dust-covered carriages, which conveyed the
monarch and his court from the railway station to their lodgings; yet
in this bourgeois simplicity there was really more moral greatness than
in any of the triumphs of the Caesars. That the love of parades which
existed in the Renaissance has died out is, perhaps, to be regretted,
for occasions still arise when they are necessary.

Alexander's prestige would certainly have suffered if, on the occasion
of a family function of such importance, he had failed to offer the
people as evidence of his power a brilliant spectacle of some sort. The
very fact that Adrian VI did not understand and appreciate this
requirement of the Renaissance made him the butt of the Romans.

At ten o'clock on the morning of December 23d the Ferrarese reached the
Ponte Molle, where breakfast was served in a nearby villa. The
appearance of this neighborhood must at that time have been different
from what it is to-day. There were casinos and wine houses on the slopes
of Monte Mario--whose summit was occupied even at that time by a villa
belonging to the Mellini--and on the hills beyond the Flaminian Way.
Nicholas V had restored the bridge over the Tiber, and also begun a
tower nearby, which Calixtus III completed. Between the Ponte Molle and
the Porta del Popolo there was then,--just as there is now,--a wretched
suburb.

[Illustration: CASTLE OF S. ANGELO, ROME.]

At the bridge crossing the Tiber they found a wedding escort composed of
the senators of Rome, the governor of the city, and the captain of
police, accompa