Don Michele da Corella was liberated by Julius II after an interrogatory which can have revealed nothing defamatory to Cesare or his father; as it is unthinkable that a Pope who did all that man could do to ruin the House of Borgia and to befoul its memory, should have preserved silence touching any such revelations as were hoped for when Corella was put to torture. That most faithful of all Cesare’s officers--and sharer of the odium that has been heaped upon Cesare’s name--entered the service of the Signory of Florence. CHAPTER IV. ATROPOS Vain were the exertions put forth by the Spanish cardinals to obtain Cesare’s enlargement, and vainer still the efforts of his sister Lucrezia, who wrote letter after letter to Francesco Gonzaga of Mantua--now Gonfalonier of the Church, and a man of influence at the Vatican--imploring him to use his interest with the Pope to the same end. Julius II remained unmoved, fearing the power of Cesare Borgia, and resolved that he should trouble Italy no more. On the score of that, no blame attaches to the Pope. The States which Borgia had conquered in the name of the Church should remain adherent to the Church. Upon that Julius was resolved, and the resolve was highly laudable. He would have no duke who controlled such a following as did Cesare, using those States as stepping-stones to greater dominions in which, no doubt, he would later have absorbed them, alienating them, so, from the Holy See. In all this Julius II was most fully justified. The odious matter in his conduct, however, is the abominable treachery it entailed, following as it did upon the undertaking by virtue of which he gained the tiara. For some months after his arrival in Spain, Cesare was confined in the prison of Chinchilla, whence--as a result, it is said, of an attempt on his part to throw the governor bodily over the battlements--he was removed to the fortress of Medina del Campo, and kept well guarded by orders of the Pope. Rumours that he had been liberated by the King of Spain overran the Romagna more than once, and set the country in a ferment, even reaching the Vatican and shaking the stout-hearted Julius into alarm. One chance of regaining his ancient might, and wreaking a sweet and terrific vengeance upon his betrayers came very close to him, but passed him by. This chance occurred in 1505, when--Queen Isabella being dead--King Ferdinand discovered that Gonzalo de Cordoba was playing him false in Naples. The Spanish king conceived a plan--according to the chronicles of Zurita--to employ Cesare as a flail for the punishment of the Great Captain. He proposed to liberate the duke, set him at the head of an army, and loose him upon Naples, trusting to the formidable alliance of Cesare’s military talents with his hatred of Gonzalo--who had betrayed him--to work the will of his Catholic Majesty.