On the twelfth of June the Lord Alexander P.P. VI married His bastard, Madonna Lucrezia Borgia, of the age of fifteen years, to the Tyrant of Pesaro, Don Giovanni Sforza, of the age of twenty-six years, with all the magnificence due to His secular rank as an Italian despot; and thereby set wagging the tongues of those who lamented the decay of ecclesiastical discipline, and who could not distinguish between the dual and contradictory offices which the Pope was expected to reconcile; as well as the pens of professional manufacturers of squibs and lampoons. The wedding-banquet took place at the Vatican, in the presence of the Pope, ten cardinals, and fifteen Roman patricians with their wives. The Holy Father presented to the ladies silver cups filled with sweetmeats, throwing them into their bosoms _ad honorem et laudem Omnipotentis Dei et Ecclesiae Romanae_, says the golden-mouthed, venomous, untrustworthy historian, Messer Stefano Infessura. In the evening there was dancing, with comedies of the conventional coarse but common type. This event is one of the bases from which disgusting charges have been levelled against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. It summarily may be stated that those charges consist entirely of the unprintable gossip of enemies or inferiors, and that not one of them satisfactorily can be proved. That the Vicar of Christ should have condescended so far is impossible; that a temporal sovereign should have condescended so far is probable, and, perhaps, regrettable; but the status of the guests, the ten cardinals, and the fifteen Roman patricians with their wives, guarantees the utter respectability of the Despot’s little private party from a contemporary point of view. * * * * *