fact that his third, Madonna Ginevra de’ Tiepoli, bore him a son, Don Costanzo Sforza, eight years later (1505). As for the infernal calumny against the Pope’s Holiness, Don Giovanni Sforza was its inventor, says the Orator of Ferrara, and the mortifying humiliation of a libidinous laughing-stock its proximate occasion. On the twentieth of December 1497, the decree of nullity of the marriage was published in Rome, the Tyrant of Pesaro refunded the lady’s dowry of thirty thousand ducats; and Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was free. * * * * * The cause of the visit to Milan of the Vicechancellor-Cardinal Ascanio Maria Sforza-Visconti, at this time, was that he had come under most undeserved suspicion of having been connected with the murder of the Duke of Gandia. Bitter as it must have been to the Pope’s Holiness to suspect his oldest friend, at least the latter’s recent treachery with Colonna made estrangement unavoidable. The Vicechancellor retired to Gennazano by Praeneste, (Palestrina), a fief of Colonna, ostensibly to worship Madonna of Good Counsel. An investigation of his Roman palace during his absence was without fruit; and, angered at the suspicion, he had retired to Milan, where his unprejudiced and straightforward action in the matter of the nullity, at a time when he naturally went in disgust of Borgia, should go a long way in favour, not only of his own bonafides, but also of that of the Lord Alexander P. P. VI. * * * * * Savonarola’s attitude toward the sentence of excommunication that had been launched against him, was incorrigible. His influence caused the Signoria of Florence unsuccessfully to appeal to the Pope’s Holiness for the withdrawal of the Brief; and the friar accompanied this appeal with an open defiance. On Christmas Day he sang the three high masses at San Marco, and announced the resumption of his frenzied discourses. The physiognomy of this mattoid is the key to the secret of his misbehaviour. He was cast in the mould of the animal-man. He had the long head with immense hinder development, the great thick nose, the enormous lower lip, coarse mouth, and heavy jowl, of a ram. Above all, in him the little lateral muscles of the nose-root were of opulent growth, a sign which is unmistakable. But, contrariwise, the narrow temples with their overhanging brows pointed in the middle, struck the note of ideality, and conquered the animalism of the man. It was this cataclysmal violence of difference, this trenchant contrast, that made him what he was. In him there were two inimical characters, the character of the saint, the character of the ram. That of the saint vanquished that of the ram: but the poignant struggle overthrew the mental balance of the saint. His proper place was not the Convent of San Marco in Florence: but the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Rome.[31] So in sorrow, in anger, in horrid uncertainty, the year 1497 ended.