August 18, 1503, Father Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, charming society figure, polished gentleman, lover of the chase, patron of the arts, for whom Raphael, Michelangelo and Brabante had worked, breathes his last. He and Cæsar had fallen desperately sick at the same time of a fever. When Cæsar recovers sufficiently to attend to his affairs, things are already in a bad way. The cardinals are plotting to seat a pope unfriendly to the Borgias. The Spanish cardinals on whom he has relied do not prove friendly and he loses his control. The funds which Papa Borgia was wont to supply for his campaigns are no longer forthcoming. Pope Julius II succeeding to the throne, takes away from Cæsar the territories assigned to him by his father “for the honor of recovering what our predecessors have wrongfully alienated.” In May, 1504, having gone to Naples on a safe conduct for the Spanish governor of that city, he is arrested and sent to Spain, where he is thrown into prison. At the end of two years he manages to escape and flees to the court of his brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, who permits him to aid in besieging the castle of a refractory subject. Here, March 12, 1507, while Lucrezia elsewhere is peacefully residing with her spouse, he is killed. I have given but a feeble outline of this charming Renaissance idyl. Mixed in with it are constant murders or poisonings of wealthy cardinals and the confiscation of their estates whenever cash for the prosecution of Cæsar’s wars or the protection of papal properties are needed. The uxorious and child-loving old pope was exceedingly nonchalant about these little matters of human life. When he died there was a fight over his coffin between priests of different factions and mercenaries belonging to Cæsar Borgia. The coffin being too short, his body was jammed down in it, minus his miter, and finally upset. Think of so much ambition coming to such a shameful end! He achieved his desire, however. He wrote his name large, if not in fame, at least in infamy. He lived in astonishing grandeur and splendor. By his picturesque iniquities he really helped to bring about the Reformation. He had a curious affection for his children and he died immensely rich--and, pope. The fair Lucrezia stands out as a strange chemical magnet of disaster. To love her was fear, disappointment, or death. And it was she and her brother Cæsar, who particularly interested Mrs. Q., although the aged Alexander amused her. During her vigorous recital I forgot the corner drug store and modern street cars of Rome, enthralled by the glamour of the ancient city. It was a delight to find that we had an intellectual affinity in the study of the vagaries of this strange phantasmagoria called human life, in which to be dull is to be a bond-slave, and to be wise is to be a mad philosopher, knowing neither right from wrong nor black from white.