There is no chronicle of his history during the eight years’ reign of the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII. Evidently he withdrew himself from the public life of the curia, from the splendour of legations, to nurse his revenues, to ingratiate himself with those who, in the next Conclave, would have the crowning or the crushing of his hopes. With the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove he was to build his house: but, first, like the prudent man, he counted the cost. Cardinal Rodrigo was far too polished a diplomatist, far too keen a man of business, to neglect long and meticulous preparation. He perfectly knew his century—indeed, as an organiser, he would have been illustrious in any century—; and, with wisest generalship, he made ready his forces against the striking of the hour for action. The smoothness with which the machinery ran in the Conclave of 1492, makes it plain, to the least experienced student of human affairs, that a master-mind had designed the gear, to ensure a minimum of friction and an exact performance. * * * * * In September 1484 the Lord Innocent P.P. VIII named Don Cesare (detto Borgia), who was now of the age of ten years, Treasurer of the Cathedral of Cartagena (Carthago Nova). In 1485, the year of the supposed murder in England of King Edward V Plantagenet and of his brother Duke Richard of York, there died in Rome Don Giorgio della Croce, husband of Madonna Giovanna de’ Catanei. On the seventh of June 1486 she married Don Carlo de Canale, a noble of Mantua, and from this time her irregular relations with Cardinal Rodrigo ceased. In an age when trade was not considered disgraceful, except for patricians, when even the greatest artists kept shops (not studios by way of compromise, but regular shops, _botteghe_, like the blacksmiths or the cobblers), it is not shocking to know that Madonna Giovanna owned an inn in the Region of Ponte. This does not mean that she performed the duties of a female boniface. She was a very great lady, bien-vue in Roman society, with a lovely villa near San Pietro _ad Vincula_; but she certainly drew a comfortable income from the Lion Inn (Albergo di Leone), opposite the Tordinona, in the Via del Orso, which was then a street of inns for foreigners. The Tordinona, from whose upper window dangled a permanent and generally tenanted noose for evildoers, has now disappeared: but the cavernous cellars of the Lion Inn, formerly filled with wine on which, by pontifical favour, no tax was levied, remain exactly as they were when the Spanish cardinal’s mistress was their owner.