told how masques of Hercules,
Jason, and Phaedra alternated with the story of Susannah and the Elders,
played by Florentine actors, and with the Mysteries of _San Giovan
Battista decapitato_ and _quel Giudeo che rosfi il corpo di Cristo_. The
servants were arrayed in silk, and the seneschal changed his dress of
richest stuffs and jewels four times in the course of the banquet.
Nymphs and centaurs, singers and buffoons, drank choice wine from golden
goblets. The most eminent and reverend master of the palace, meanwhile,
moved among his guests 'like some great Caesar's son.' The whole
entertainment lasted from Saturday till Thursday, during which time
Ercole of Este and his bride assisted at Church ceremonies in S.
Peter's, and visited the notabilities of Rome in the intervals of games,
dances, and banquets of the kind described. We need scarcely add that,
in spite of his enormous wealth, the young Cardinal died 60,000 florins
in debt. Happily for the Church and for Italy, he expired at Rome in
January 1474, after parading his impudent debaucheries through Milan and
Venice as the Pope's Legate. It was rumored, but never well
authenticated, that the Venetians helped his death by poison.[5] The
sensual indulgences of every sort in which this child of the
proletariat, suddenly raised to princely splendor, wallowed for
twenty-five continuous months, are enough to account for his immature
death without the hypothesis of poisoning. With him expired a plan which
might have ended in making the Papacy a secular, hereditary kingdom.
During his stay at Milan, Pietro struck a bargain with the Duke, by the
terms of which Galeazzo Maria Sforza was to be crowned king of Lombardy,
while the Cardinal Legate was to return and seize upon the Papal
throne.[6] Sixtus, it is said, was willing to abdicate in his nephew's
favor, with a view to the firmer establishment of his family in the
tyranny of Rome. The scheme was a wild one, yet, considering the power
and wealth of the Sforza family, not so wholly impracticable as might
appear. The same dream floated, a few years later, before the
imagination of the two Borgias; and Machiavelli wrote in his calm style
that to make the Papal power hereditary was all that remained for
nepotism in his days to do.[7] The opinion which had been conceived of
the Cardinal of San Sisto during his two years of eminence may be
gathered from the following couplets of an epigram placed, as Corio
informs us, on his tom