You will remember that Rodrigo Lanzol, a Spaniard who afterwards assumed the name of Rodrigo Borgia, because his maternal uncle of that name was fortunate enough to succeed to the papacy as Calixtus III, and could do him many good turns afterwards, himself succeeded to the papacy by bribery and other outrages under the title of Alexander VI. That was August 10, 1442. Before that, however, as nephew to Calixtus III, he had been made bishop, cardinal, and vice-chancellor of the Church solely because he was a relative and favored by his uncle; and all this before he was thirty-five. He had proceeded to Rome, established himself with many mistresses at his call in a magnificent palace, and at the age of thirty-seven, his uncle Calixtus III having died, was reprimanded by Pius II, the new pope, for his riotous and adulterous life. By 1470, when he was forty-nine he took to himself, as his favorite, Vanozza dei Cattani, the former wife of three different husbands. By Vanozza, who was very charming, he had four children, all of whom he prized highly--Giovanni, afterwards Duke of Gandia, born 1474; Cæsar, 1476; Lucrezia, 1480; Geoffreddo or Giuffré, born 1481 or 1482. There were other children--Girolamo, Isabella and Pier Luigi, whose parentage on the mother’s side is uncertain; and still another child, Laura, whom he acquired via Giulia Farnese, the daughter of the famous family of that name, who was his mistress after he tired, some years later, of Vanozza. Meanwhile his children had grown up or were fairly well-grown when he became pope, which opened the most astonishing chapter of the history of this strange family. Alexander was a curious compound of paternal affection, love of gold, love of women, vanity, and other things. He certainly was fond of his children or he would not have torn Italy with dissension in order to advantage them in their fortunes. His career is the most ruthless and weird of any that I know. He was no sooner pope (about April, 1493) than he proposed to carve out careers for his family--his favored children by his favorite mistress. In 1492, the same year he was made pope, he created Cæsar, his sixteen-year-old son, studying at Pisa, a cardinal, showing the state of the papacy in those days. He proposed to marry his daughter Lucrezia well, and having the year before, when she was only eleven, betrothed her to one Don Cherubin de Centelles, a Spaniard, he broke this arrangement and had Lucrezia married by proxy to Don Gasparo de Procida, son of the Count of Aversa, a man of much more importance, who, he thought, could better advance her fortune.