CHAPTER I.

Towards the end of the fifteenth century--that is to say, at the epoch
when our history opens the Piazza of St. Peter's at Rome was far from
presenting so noble an aspect as that which is offered in our own day to
anyone who approaches it by the Piazza dei Rusticucci.

In fact, the Basilica of Constantine existed no longer, while that of
Michael Angelo, the masterpiece of thirty popes, which cost the labour
of three centuries and the expense of two hundred and sixty millions,
existed not yet. The ancient edifice, which had lasted for eleven
hundred and forty-five years, had been threatening to fall in about
1440, and Nicholas V, artistic forerunner of Julius II and Leo X, had
had it pulled down, together with the temple of Probus Anicius which
adjoined it. In their place he had had the foundations of a new temple
laid by the architects Rossellini and Battista Alberti; but some years
later, after the death of Nicholas V, Paul II, the Venetian, had not
been able to give more than five thousand crowns to continue the project
of his predecessor, and thus the building was arrested when it had
scarcely risen above the ground, and presented the appearance of a
still-born edifice, even sadder than that of a ruin.

As to the piazza itself, it had not yet, as the reader will understand
from the foregoing explanation, either the fine colonnade of Bernini, or
the dancing fountains, or that Egyptian obelisk which, according to
Pliny, was set up by the Pharaoh at Heliopolis, and transferred to Rome
by Caligula, who set it up in Nero's Circus, where it remained till
1586. Now, as Nero's Circus was situated on the very ground where St.

Peter's now stands, and the base of this obelisk covered the actual site
where the vestry now is, it looked like a gigantic needle shooting up
from the middle of truncated columns, walls of unequal height, and
half-carved stones.

On the right of this building, a ruin from its cradle, arose the
Vatican, a splendid Tower of Babel, to which all the celebrated
architects of the Roman school contributed their work for a thousand
years: at this epoch the two magnificent chapels did not exist, nor the
twelve great halls, the two-and-twenty courts, the thirty staircases,
and the two thousand bedchambers; for Pope Sixtus V, the sublime
swineherd, who did so many things in a five years' reign, had not yet
been able to add the immense building which on the eastern side towers
above the court of St. Damasius; still, it was truly the old sacred
edifice, with its venerable associations, in which Charlemagne received
hospitality when he was crowned emperor by Pope Leo III.

All the same, on the 9th of August, 1492, the whole of Rome, from the
People's Gate to the Coliseum and from the Baths of Diocletian to the
castle of Sant' Angelo, seemed to have made an appointment on this
piazza: the multitude thronging it was so great as to overflow into all
the neighbouring streets, which started from this centre like the rays
of a star. The crowds of people, looking like a motley moving carpet,
were climbing up into the basilica, grouping themselves upon the stones,
hanging on the columns, standing up against the walls; they entered by
the doors of houses and reappeared at the windows, so numerous and so
densely packed that one might have said each window was walled up with
heads. Now all this multitude had its eyes fixed on one single point in
the Vatican; for in the Vatican was the Conclave, and as Innocent VIII
had been dead for sixteen days, the Conclave was in the act of electing
a pope.

Rome is the town of elections: since her foundation down to our own
day--that is to say, in the course of nearly twenty-six centuries--she
has constantly elected her kings, consuls, tribunes, emperors, and
popes: thus Rome during the days of Conclave appears to be attacked by a
strange fever which drives everyone to the Vatican or to Monte Cavallo,
according as the scarlet-robed assembly is held in one or the other of
these two palaces: it is, in fact, because the raising up of a new
pontiff is a great event for everybody; for, according to the average
established in the period between St. Peter and Gregory XVI, every pope
lasts about eight years, and these eight years, according to the
character of the man who is elected, are a period either of tranquillity
or of disorder, of justice or of venality, of peace or of war.

Never perhaps since the day when the first successor of St. Peter took
his seat on the, pontifical throne until the interregnum which now
occurred, had so great an agitation been shown as there was at this
moment, when, as we have shown, all these people were thronging on the
Piazza of St. Peter and in the streets which led to it. It is true that
this was not without reason; for Innocent VIII--who was called the
father of his people because he had added to his subjects eight sons and
the same number of daughters--had, as we have said, after living a life
of self-indulgence, just died, after a death-struggle during which, if
the journal of Stefano Infessura may be believed, two hundred and twenty
murders were committed in the streets of Rome. The authority had then
devolved in the customary way upon the Cardinal Camerlengo, who during
the interregnum had sovereign powers; but as he had been obliged to
fulfil all the duties of his office--that is, to get money coined in his
name and bearing his arms, to take the fisherman's ring from the finger
of the dead pope, to dress, shave and paint him, to have the corpse
embalmed, to lower the coffin after nine days' obsequies into the
provisional niche where the last deceased pope has to remain until his
successor comes to take his place and consign him to his final tomb;
lastly, as he had been obliged to wall up the door of the Conclave and
the window of the balcony from which the pontifical election is
proclaimed, he had not had a single moment for busying himself with the
police; so that the assassinations had continued in goodly fashion, and
there were loud cries for an energetic hand which should make all these
swords and all these daggers retire into their sheaths.

Now the eyes of this multitude were fixed, as we have said, upon the
Vatican, and particularly upon one chimney, from which would come the
first signal, when suddenly, at the moment of the 'Ave Maria'--that is
to say, at the hour when the day begins to decline--great cries went up
from all the crowd mixed with bursts of laughter, a discordant murmur of
threats and raillery, the cause being that they had just perceived at
the top of the chimney a thin smoke, which seemed like a light cloud to
go up perpendicularly into the sky. This smoke announced that Rome was
still without a master, and that the world still had no pope; for this
was the smoke of the voting tickets which were being burned, a proof
that the cardinals had not yet come to an agreement.

Scarcely had this smoke appeared, to vanish almost immediately, when all
the innumerable crowd, knowing well that there was nothing else to wait
for, and that all was said and done until ten o'clock the next morning,
the time when the cardinals had their first voting, went off in a tumult
of noisy joking, just as they would after the last rocket of a firework
display; so that at the end of one minute nobody was there where a
quarter of an hour before there had been an excited crowd, except a few
curious laggards, who, living in the neighbourhood or on the very piazza
itself; were less in a hurry than the rest to get back to their homes;
again, little by little, these last groups insensibly diminished; for
half-past nine had just struck, and at this hour the streets of Rome
began already to be far from safe; then after these groups followed some
solitary passer-by, hurrying his steps; one after another the doors were
closed, one after another the windows were darkened; at last, when ten
o'clock struck, with the single exception of one window in the Vatican
where a lamp might be seen keeping obstinate vigil, all the houses,
piazzas, and streets were plunged in the deepest obscurity.

At this moment a man wrapped in a cloak stood up like a ghost against
one of the columns of the uncompleted basilica, and gliding slowly and
carefully among the stones which were lying about round the foundations
of the new church, advanced as far as the fountain which, formed the
centre of the piazza, erected in the very place where the obelisk is now
set up of which we have spoken already; when he reached this spot he
stopped, doubly concealed by the darkness of the night and by the shade
of the monument, and after looking around him to see if he were really
alone, drew his sword, and with its point rapping three times on the
pavement of the piazza, each time made the sparks fly. This signal, for
signal it was, was not lost: the last lamp which still kept vigil in the
Vatican went out, and at the same instant an object thrown out of the
window fell a few paces off from the young man in the cloak: he, guided
by the silvery sound it had made in touching the flags, lost no time in
laying his hands upon it in spite of the darkness, and when he had it in
his possession hurried quickly away.

Thus the unknown walked without turning round half-way along the Borgo
Vecchio; but there he turned to the right and took a street at the other
end of which was set up a Madonna with a lamp: he approached the light,
and drew from his pocket the object he had picked up, which was nothing
else than a Roman crown piece; but this crown unscrewed, and in a cavity
hollowed in its thickness enclosed a letter, which the man to whom it
was addressed began to read at the risk of being recognised, so great
was his haste to know what it contained.

We say at the risk of being recognised, for in his eagerness the
recipient of this nocturnal missive had thrown back the hood of his
cloak; and as his head was wholly within the luminous circle cast by the
lamp, it was easy to distinguish in the light the head of a handsome
young man of about five or six and twenty, dressed in a purple doublet
slashed at the shoulder and elbow to let the shirt come through, and
wearing on his head a cap of the same colour with a long black feather
falling to his shoulder. It is true that he did not stand there long;
for scarcely had he finished the letter, or rather the note, which he
had just received in so strange and mysterious a manner, when he
replaced it in its silver receptacle, and readjusting his cloak so as to
hide all the lower part of his face, resumed his walk with a rapid step,
crossed Borgo San Spirito, and took the street of the Longara, which he
followed as far as the church of Regina Coeli. When he arrived at this
place, he gave three rapid knocks on the door of a house of good
appearance, which immediately opened; then slowly mounting the stairs he
entered a room where two women were awaiting him with an impatience so
unconcealed that both as they saw him exclaimed together:

"Well, Francesco, what news?"

"Good news, my mother; good, my sister," replied the young man, kissing
the one and giving his hand to the other. "Our father has gained three
votes to-day, but he still needs six to have the majority."

"Then is there no means of buying them?" cried the elder of the two
women, while the younger, instead of speaking, asked him with a look.

"Certainly, my mother, certainly," replied the young man; "and it is
just about that that my father has been thinking. He is giving Cardinal
Orsini his palace at Rome and his two castles of Monticello and Soriano;
to Cardinal Colanna his abbey of Subiaca; he gives Cardinal Sant' Angelo
the bishopric of Porto, with the furniture and cellar; to the Cardinal
of Parma the town of Nepi; to the Cardinal of Genoa the church of Santa
Maria-in-Via-Lata; and lastly, to Cardinal Savelli the church of Santa
Maria Maggiore and the town of Civita Castellana; as to Cardinal
Ascanio-Sforza, he knows already that the day before yesterday we sent
to his house four mules laden with silver and plate, and out of this
treasure he has engaged to give five thousand ducats to the Cardinal
Patriarch of Venice."

"But how shall we get the others to know the intentions of Roderigo?"
asked the elder of the two women.

"My father has provided for everything, and proposes an easy method; you
know, my mother, with what sort of ceremonial the cardinals' dinner is
carried in."

"Yes, on a litter, in a large basket with the arms of the cardinal for
whom the meal is prepared."

"My father has bribed the bishop who examines it: to-morrow is a
feast-day; to the Cardinals Orsini, Colonna, Savelli, Sant' Angelo, and
the Cardinals of Parma and of Genoa, chickens will be sent for hot meat,
and each chicken will contain a deed of gift duly drawn up, made by me
in my father's name, of the houses, palaces, or churches which are
destined for each."

"Capital!" said the elder of the two women; "now, I am certain, all will
go well."

"And by the grace of God," added the younger, with a strangely mocking
smile, "our father will be pope."

"Oh, it will be a fine day for us!" cried Francesco.

"And for Christendom," replied his sister, with a still more ironical
expression.

"Lucrezia, Lucrezia," said the mother, "you do not deserve the happiness
which is coming to us."

"What does that matter, if it comes all the same? Besides, you know the
proverb; mother: 'Large families are blessed of the Lord'; and still
more so our family, which is so patriarchal."

At the same time she cast on her brother a look so wanton that the young
man blushed under it: but as at the moment he had to think of other
things than his illicit loves, he ordered that four servants should be
awakened; and while they were getting armed to accompany him, he drew up
and signed the six deeds of gift which were to be carried the next day
to the cardinals; for, not wishing to be seen at their houses, he
thought he would profit by the night-time to carry them himself to
certain persons in his confidence who would have them passed in, as had
been arranged, at the dinner-hour. Then, when the deeds were quite ready
and the servants also, Francesco went out with them, leaving the two
women to dream golden dreams of their future greatness.

From the first dawn of day the people hurried anew, as ardent and
interested as on the evening before, to the Piazza of the Vatican,
where; at the ordinary time, that is, at ten o'clock in the
morning,--the smoke rose again as usual, evoking laughter and murmuring,
as it announced that none of the cardinals had secured the majority. A
report, however, began to be spread about that the chances were divided
between three candidates, who were Roderigo Borgia, Giuliano
dellaRovera, and Ascanio Sforza; for the people as yet knew nothing of
the four mules laden with plate and silver which had been led to
Sforza's house, by reason of which he had given up his own votes to his
rival. In the midst of the agitation excited in the crowd by this new
report a solemn chanting was heard; it proceeded from a procession, led
by the Cardinal Camerlengo, with the object of obtaining from Heaven the
speedy election of a pope: this procession, starting from the church of
Ara Coeli at the Capitol, was to make stations before the principal
Madonnas and the most frequented churches. As soon as the silver
crucifix was perceived which went in front, the most profound silence
prevailed, and everyone fell on his knees; thus a supreme calm followed
the tumult and uproar which had been heard a few minutes before, and
which at each appearance of the smoke had assumed a more threatening
character: there was a shrewd suspicion that the procession, as well as
having a religious end in view, had a political object also, and that
its influence was intended to be as great on earth as in heaven. In any
case, if such had been the design of the Cardinal Camerlengo, he had not
deceived himself, and the effect was what he desired: when the
procession had gone past, the laughing and joking continued, but the
cries and threats had completely ceased.

The whole day passed thus; for in Rome nobody works. You are either a
cardinal or a lacquey, and you live, nobody knows how. The crowd was
still extremely numerous, when, towards two o'clock in the afternoon,
another procession, which had quite as much power of provoking noise as
the first of imposing silence, traversed in its turn the Piazza of St.

Peter's: this was the dinner procession. The people received it with the
usual bursts of laughter, without suspecting, for all their irreverence,
that this procession, more efficacious than the former, had just settled
the election of the new pope.

The hour of the Ave Maria came as on the evening before; but, as on the
evening before, the waiting of the whole day was lost; for, as half-past
eight struck, the daily smoke reappeared at the top of the chimney. But
when at the same moment rumours which came from the inside of the
Vatican were spread abroad, announcing that, in all probability, the
election would take place the next day, the good people preserved their
patience. Besides, it had been very hot that day, and they were so
broken with fatigue and roasted by the sun, these dwellers in shade and
idleness, that they had no strength left to complain.

The morning of the next day, which was the 11th of August, 1492, arose
stormy and dark; this did not hinder the multitude from thronging the
piazzas, streets, doors, houses, churches. Moreover, this disposition of
the weather was a real blessing from Heaven; for if there were heat, at
least there would be no sun. Towards nine o'clock threatening
storm-clouds were heaped up over all the Trastevere; but to this crowd
what mattered rain, lightning, or thunder? They were preoccupied with a
concern of a very different nature; they were waiting for their pope: a
promise had been made them for to-day, and it could be seen by the
manner of all, that if the day should pass without any election taking
place, the end of it might very well be a riot; therefore, in proportion
as the time advanced, the agitation grew greater. Nine o'clock,
half-past nine, a quarter to ten struck, without anything happening to
confirm or destroy their hopes. At last the first stroke of ten was
heard; all eyes turned towards the chimney: ten o'clock struck slowly,
each stroke vibrating in the heart of the multitude. At last the tenth
stroke trembled, then vanished shuddering into space, and, a great cry
breaking simultaneously from a hundred thousand breasts followed the
silence "Non v'e fumo! There is no smoke!" In other words, "We have a
pope."

At this moment the rain began to fall; but no one paid any attention to
it, so great were the transports of joy and impatience among all the
people. At last a little stone was detached from the walled window which
gave on the balcony and upon which all eyes were fixed: a general shout
saluted its fall; little by little the aperture grew larger, and in a
few minutes it was large enough to allow a man to come out on the
balcony.

The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza appeared; but at the moment when he was on
the point of coming out, frightened by the rain and the lightning, he
hesitated an instant, and finally drew back: immediately the multitude
in their turn broke out like a tempest into cries, curses, howls,
threatening to tear down the Vatican and to go and seek their pope
themselves. At this noise Cardinal Sforza, more terrified by the popular
storm than by the storm in the heavens, advanced on the balcony, and
between two thunderclaps, in a moment of silence astonishing to anyone
who had just heard the clamour that went before, made the following
proclamation:

"I announce to you a great joy: the most Eminent and most Reverend
Signor Roderigo Lenzuolo Borgia, Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal-Deacon
of San Nicolao-in-Carcere, Vice-Chancellor of the Church, has now been
elected Pope, and has assumed the name of Alexander VI."

The news of this nomination was received with strange joy. Roderigo
Borgia had the reputation of a dissolute man, it is true, but
libertinism had mounted the throne with Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, so
that for the Romans there was nothing new in the singular situation of a
pope with a mistress and five children. The great thing for the moment
was that the power fell into strong hands; and it was more important for
the tranquillity of Rome that the new pope inherited the sword of St.

Paul than that he inherited the keys of St. Peter.

And so, in the feasts that were given on this occasion, the dominant
character was much more warlike than religious, and would have appeared
rather to suit with the election of some young conqueror than the
exaltation of an old pontiff: there was no limit to the pleasantries and
prophetic epigrams on the name of Alexander, which for the second time
seemed to promise the Romans the empire of the world; and the same
evening, in the midst of brilliant illuminations and bonfires, which
seemed to turn the town into a lake of flame, the following epigram was
read, amid the acclamation of the people:

    "Rome under Caesar's rule in ancient story
     At home and o'er the world victorious trod;
     But Alexander still extends his glory:
     Caesar was man, but Alexander God."

As to the new pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of
etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man
the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast his
eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he cherished the
hope of directing at the will of his own genius.