double
pomp of Church and King. As the pope had settled that the young bridal
pair should live near him, Caesar Borgia, the new cardinal, undertook
to manage the ceremony of their entry into Rome and the reception, and
Lucrezia, who enjoyed at her father's side an amount of favour hitherto
unheard of at the papal court, desired on her part to contribute all the
splendour she had it in her power to add. He therefore went to receive
the young people with a stately and magnificent escort of lords and
cardinals, while she awaited them attended by the loveliest and noblest
ladies of Rome, in one of the halls of the Vatican. A throne was there
prepared for the pope, and at his feet were cushions far Lucrezia
and Dona Sancia. "Thus," writes Tommaso Tommasi, "by the look of the
assembly and the sort of conversation that went on for hours, you
would suppose you were present at some magnificent and voluptuous royal
audience of ancient Assyria, rather than at the severe consistory of
a Roman pontiff, whose solemn duty it is to exhibit in every act the
sanctity of the name he bears. But," continues the same historian,
"if the Eve of Pentecost was spent in such worthy functions, the
celebrations of the coming of the Holy Ghost on the following day were
no less decorous and becoming to the spirit of the Church; for thus
writes the master of the ceremonies in his journal:
"'The pope made his entry into the Church of the Holy Apostles, and
beside him on the marble steps of the pulpit where the canons of
St. Peter are wont to chant the Epistle and Gospel, sat Lucrezia his
daughter and Sancia his son's wife: round about them, a disgrace to the
Church and a public scandal, were grouped a number of other Roman ladies
far more fit to dwell in Messalina's city than in St. Peter's.'"
So at Rome and Naples did men slumber while ruin was at hand; so did
they waste their time and squander their money in a vain display of
pride; and this was going on while the French, thoroughly alive, were
busy laying hands upon the torches with which they would presently set
Italy on fire.
Indeed, the designs of Charles VIII for conquest were no longer for
anybody a matter of doubt. The young king had sent an embassy to the
various Italian States, composed of Perrone dei Baschi, Brigonnet,
d'Aubigny, and the president of the Provencal Parliament. The mission of
this embassy was to demand from the Italian princes their co-operation
in recovering the right
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