a. As Mariana remarks, he bought this dukedom for
his son.

Don Pedro Luis, however, when still a young man, died in Spain, for a
document of the year 1491 speaks of him as deceased, and mentions a
legacy left by his will to his sister Lucretia. The duchy of Gandia
passed to Rodrigo's second son, Don Giovanni, who hastened to Valencia
to take possession of it.

Meanwhile the fancy of the licentious cardinal had turned to other
women. In May, 1489, when Lucretia was nine years old, appears for the
first time the most celebrated of his mistresses, Giulia Farnese, a
young woman of extraordinary beauty, to whose charms the cardinal and
future pope, who was growing old, yielded with all the ardor of a young
man.

It was the adulterous love of this Giulia which first brought the
Farnese house into the history of Rome, and subsequently into that of
the world; for Rodrigo Borgia laid the foundation of the greatness of
this family when he made Giulia's brother Alessandro a cardinal. In this
manner he prepared the way to the papacy for the future Paul III, the
founder of the house of Farnese of Parma, a distinguished family which
died out in 1758 in the person of Queen Elisabeth, who occupied the
throne of Spain.

The Farnese, up to the time of the Borgias, were of no importance in
Rome, where two of the most beautiful buildings of the Renaissance have
since helped to make their name immortal. They did not even live in
Rome, but in Roman Etruria, where they owned a few towns--Farneto, from
which, doubtless, their name was derived, Ischia, Capracola, and
Capodimonte. Some time later, though just when is not known, they were
temporarily in possession of Isola Farnese, an ancient castle in the
ruins of Veii, which from the fourteenth century had belonged to the
Orsini.

[Illustration: FARNESE PALACE, ROME.]

The origin of the Farnese family is uncertain, but the tradition,
according to which they were descended from the Lombards or the Franks,
appears to be true. It is supported by the fact that the name Ranuccio,
which is the Italian form of Rainer, is of frequent occurrence in the
family. The Farnese became prominent in Etruria as a small dynasty of
robber barons, without, however, being able to attain to the power of
their neighbors, the Orsini of Anguillara and Bracciano, and the famous
Counts of Vico, who were of German descent and who ruled over the
Tuscan prefecture for more than a hundred years, until that country
w