An ensample of this kind can leave no doubt in the mind but that, in spite of all to the contrary, the Pontifex Maximus of Rome, simoniacally elected or not, implicitly and explicitly was regarded then as God’s Vicegerent, as Earthly Vicar of Christ, by the most flagitious of men. Then what can be thought of the good and clean-living majority? The bodies were buried in the chapel of the hospice of the Misericordia, the Brotherhood of Pity, one of whose obligations is the care of criminals condemned on the capital charge. This account of the _colpo-di-stato_ of Sinigaglia differs from that to which the world is accustomed. It is said that, when Messer Niccolo Machiavelli returned to Florence, he was induced to make a different statement to the one which he previously had made from personal observation in his first dispatches. According to this second version, there was no conspiracy; and the brigands Vitelli and da Fermo were simply massacred by order of Duke Cesare. It is the execrable Messer Francesco Guicciardini who has prostituted his golden pen to record this so-called version of Machiavelli, which has come to be regarded as veracious history. “Duke Cesare de Valentinois, acknowledged sovereign of the Romagna, judged his subjects who were guilty of high treason: as chief of the State, he condemned the assassins who sought his life: as generalissimo, he punished treacherous and rebellious subalterns. It is known from other sources, that these two barons were only brigands stained with murders, and that their death was a deliverance for Italy. Without insisting on this point, and if it be said that the procedure of Duke Cesare was odious,—the capture by a ruse and the summary execution,—it may be pointed out that everywhere and in all ages criminals are taken by whatever method may be possible, and that military tribunals have never wasted time in long formalities. There was accusation, trial, and execution, all in regular though rapid form. We well may call the action of Duke Cesare a coup-d’-Etat. He is not more blameworthy than the Emperor Napoleon III who in 1852 was loudly applauded. Neither is it necessary for his justification to urge the barbarous customs of his age; for we should be forced to remember that, in the Nineteenth Century, our (French) national hero, in a time of peace, caused to be seized on foreign territory, to be carried to Vincennes, and, after the mockery of a trial, to be shot like a dog in the castle-ditch, an innocent man who was a prince of the blood-royal of France. [Duc d’Enghien?] Yet no man has ever dared to liken the Emperor Napoleon I to a Borgia! (_Réné, Comte de Maricourt._) The news reached Rome on the night of the second of January. The blow had been struck with such rapidity as to put complicity of the Lord Alexander beyond the dimensions of time and space.