hat his daughter had made him understand how dangerous it
would be to himself to show too openly before the assassin, who was
coming home, the immoderate love he felt for his victim.

CHAPTER VIII

Caesar remained at Naples, partly to give time to the paternal grief to
cool down, and partly to get on with another business he had lately
been charged with, nothing else than a proposition of marriage between
Lucrezia and Don Alfonso of Aragon, Duke of Bicelli and Prince of
Salerno, natural son of Alfonso II and brother of Dona Sancha. It was
true that Lucrezia was already married to the lord of Pesaro, but she
was the daughter of an father who had received from heaven the right of
uniting and disuniting. There was no need to trouble about so trifling a
matter: when the two were ready to marry, the divorce would be effected.
Alexander was too good a tactician to leave his daughter married to a
son-in-law who was becoming useless to him.

Towards the end of August it was announced that the ambassador was
coming back to Rome, having accomplished his mission to the new king
to his great satisfaction. And thither he returned an the 5th of
September,--that is, nearly three months after the Duke of Gandia's
death,--and on the next day, the 6th, from the church of Santa Maria
Novella, where, according to custom, the cardinals and the Spanish and
Venetian ambassadors were awaiting him on horseback at the door, he
proceeded to the Vatican, where His Holiness was sitting; there he
entered the consistory, was admitted by the pope, and in accordance
with the usual ceremonial received his benediction and kiss; then,
accompanied once more in the same fashion by the ambassadors and
cardinals, he was escorted to his own apartments. Thence he proceeded
to, the pope's, as soon as he was left alone; for at the consistory they
had had no speech with one another, and the father and son had a hundred
things to talk about, but of these the Duke of Gandia was not one, as
might have been expected. His name was not once spoken, and neither on
that day nor afterwards was there ever again any mention of the unhappy
young man: it was as though he had never existed.

It was the fact that Caesar brought good news, King Frederic gave his
consent to the proposed union; so the marriage of Sforza and Lucrezia
was dissolved on a pretext of nullity. Then Frederic authorised the
exhumation of D'jem's body, which, it will be remembered, was worth
300,0