safety of the city was secured, from the
very first days of his accession, by the establishment of a strong and
vigilant police force, and a tribunal consisting of four magistrates of
irreproachable character, empowered to prosecute all nocturnal crimes,
which during the last pontificate had been so common that their very
numbers made impunity certain: these judges from the first showed a
severity which neither the rank nor the purse of the culprit could
modify. This presented such a great contrast to the corruption of
the last reign,--in the course of which the vice-chamberlain one day
remarked in public, when certain people were complaining of the venality
of justice, "God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and
pay,"--that the capital of the Christian world felt for one brief moment
restored to the happy days of the papacy. So, at the end of a year,
Alexander VI had reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which
his predecessors lost. His political credit was still to be established,
if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme. To arrive
at this, he must employ two agencies--alliances and conquests. His plan
was to begin with alliances. The gentleman of Aragon who had married
Lucrezia when she was only the daughter of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was
not a man powerful enough, either by birth and fortune or by intellect,
to enter with any sort of effect into the plots and plans of Alexander
VI; the separation was therefore changed into a divorce, and Lucrezia
Borgia was now free to remarry. Alexander opened up two negotiations at
the same time: he needed an ally to keep a watch on the policy of the
neighbouring States. John Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza,
brother of the great Francis I, Duke of Milan, was lord of Pesaro; the
geographical situation of this place, an the coast, on the way between
Florence and Venice, was wonderfully convenient for his purpose; so
Alexander first cast an eye upon him, and as the interest of both
parties was evidently the same, it came about that John Sforza was very
soon Lucrezia's second husband.

At the same time overtures had been made to Alfonso of Aragon, heir
presumptive to the crown of Naples, to arrange a marriage between Dana
Sancia, his illegitimate daughter, and Goffreda, the pope's third son;
but as the old Ferdinand wanted to make the best bargain he could out of
it; he dragged on the negotiations as long as possible, urging that the
two