and unexpectedly one day there appears the figure of Cæsar. The ensuing scene (Lucrezia and Sancha present) is not given. Bisceglie is stabbed in his bed and this time dies. Is the crime avenged? Not at all. This is Papa Alexander’s own dominion. This is a family affair, and father is very fond of Cæsar, so the matter is hushed up. Witness the interesting final chapters. Cæsar goes off, October, 1500, to fight the princes in Romagna once more, among whom are Giovanni, and Sforza, one of Lucrezia’s ex-husbands. July, 1501, Alexander leaves the papal palace in Rome to fight the Colonna, one of the two powerful families of Rome, with the assistance of the other powerful family, the Orsini. In his absence Lucrezia, his beloved, is acting-pope! January first (or thereabouts), 1501, Lucrezia is betrothed to Alphonso, son and heir to Ercole d’Este, whose famous villa near Rome is still to be seen. Neither Alphonso nor his father was anxious for this union, but Papa Alexander, Pope of Rome, has set his heart on it. By bribes and threats he brings about a proxy marriage--Alphonso not being present--celebrated with great pomp at St. Peter’s. January, 1502, Lucrezia arrives in the presence of her new husband who falls seriously in love with her. Her fate is now to settle down, and no further tragedies befall on account of her, except one. A certain Ercole Strozzi, an Italian noble, appears on the scene and falls violently in love with her. She is only twenty-three or four even now. Alphonso d’Este, her new husband, becomes violently jealous and murders Ercole. Result: further peace until her death in 1511 in her thirty-ninth year, during which period she had four children by Alphonso--three boys and one girl. As for brother Cæsar he was, unfortunately, leading a more checkered career. On December 21, 1502, when he was only twenty-six, as a general fighting the allied minor princes in Romagna, he caused to be strangled in his headquarters at Senigallia, Vitellozzo Viletti and Oliveralto da Fermo, two princelings who with others had conspired against him some time before at Perugia. Awed by his growing power, they had been so foolish as to endeavor to placate him by capturing Senigallia for him from their allies and presenting it to him and allowing themselves to be lured to his house by protestations of friendship. Result: strangulation.