One of the best tales in the "Decameron" turns on the conversion of a Jew, who goes to Rome, sees the conduct of Pope and cardinals, and becomes convinced that only a Divine Church can support so staggering a burden. In Borgia's time the Curia outdid itself, and Borgia led the way. He acknowledged his children, and lavished papal revenues upon them; he bestowed a cardinal's hat on Alexander Farnese, founder of the Farnese family, for the sake of Giulia Farnese, his frail sister; he sanctioned ballets and theatricals of a scandalous nature in the Vatican palace, and encouraged his sons and his cardinals in a dissolute life. Vice was not all; the odour of crime infected the air. The Pope's son, the Duke of Gandia, was murdered, so was his son-in-law, husband of his daughter Lucrezia. Cardinals died mysteriously. The common voice, whispering low in Rome and loud elsewhere, ascribed these murders to Caesar Borgia. It appeared as if the Pope believed the charges himself. "Caesar," he said, "is a good-natured man, but he cannot tolerate affronts." Lucrezia, too, became the object of the grossest slanders. No doubt common gossip then, as always, raised a tree of falsehood from a mustard grain of truth; but credulity accepted every accusation as true. North of the Alps the simple-minded Germans shuddered and crossed themselves. Even the Romans were shocked. When the Pope died, no man would touch his body; it was dragged by a rope fastened to its foot from the bed to the grave, and there tumbled in. No one doubted that his soul had gone to hell. Alexander VI violated every rule of domestic morality; nevertheless, Pope Julius II (1503-13) violated the sacred character of priest as fundamentally, though in a much less repulsive way. Julius, a nephew of Sixtus IV, was a fiery soldier, a high-aspiring prince, a man of great qualities, impatient and magnificent. Had he been duke of Milan or King of Naples, he would have presented a noble figure; but a Pope armed cap-a-pie, entering a conquered city through the breach battered by his cannon, was as clear a defiance of the evangelical spirit of the reformers as the private profligacy of Pope Borgia.