forced her to beg Alphonso to return instead. There is some confusion
at this point. Certainly, in the end, Lucrezia was sent away into the
country--to Spoleto--and here, after a little while, Alphonso joined
her. It was dangerous, but they were at the age when evil
anticipations are sustained with an effort. It is not natural in one's
teens to hold for ever a problematical foreboding. Death in fulness of
physical well-being is a dark midnight possibility, not a permanent
obsession for broad and cheerful daylight. Foolishly, and yet so
naturally, their fears gradually fell away, and Cæsar Borgia being at
Forli, fighting, by the following October they were back in Rome,
where Lucrezia gave birth to a son, and where, for another year, they
lived undisturbed, while Michelangelo was at work upon his Pieta
Copernicus, and Pintorricchio continued to make pictures round the
walls of the Vatican.
[Illustration: THE ANNUNCIATION
FROM THE SERIES OF FRESCOES PAINTED BY PINTORRICCHIO AT THE
VATICAN]
In 1500, the year of Alexander's jubilee, Cæsar returned, and the
calamity, which had practically been a foregone conclusion for a year,
came upon the Biselli household. Before it occurred, however, an
incident occurred which is another strong testimony to gentleness of
heart in Lucrezia. A chimney fell upon Alexander, and during his brief
illness it was not his mistress, nor any of the many persons whose
business it was more or less to attend to him, who undertook the
nursing, but the girl Lucrezia herself. It is said the old man refused
to have anybody else about him. Clearly, then, she had more tender
ways, more naturally capable and patient methods, than the rest, and
to a patient made herself the comfortable embodiment of motherliness,
sympathy, control, and unselfishness. No woman would be clamoured for
in a sick-room who did not possess all the finer and warmer qualities
of character.
Soon after this the inevitable happened. Alphonso, walking up the
steps of the Vatican, was set upon by a group of masked men with
daggers. Grievously wounded, he managed to tear past them into the
Pope's own apartments, where Lucrezia was sitting with her father. As
the bleeding man staggered into the room she fainted dead away. So
would any normally tender woman, dragged suddenly from the trivial
conversation into this new horror of desolation.
The dying man was put to bed, and joyfully given the last absolution.
But Lucrezia, ill herself with a fever brought on by shock, made a
desperate struggle to save the life belonging to her. Here again she
shows as a perfectly natural woman. Driven at last into revolt by
those she dared not openly defy, and heartsick, shaken, burning with
terror, impotence, and distress, she yet fought them with all the
pitiful means at her disposition. Nobody but herself or his sister
Sancia were allowed to attend the wounded man; all his food these two
cooked between them, probably with their hearts racing in perpetual
fearfulness. It is said--and there seems always a vague suggestion
behind these circumstances that Alexander was a weak man in the power
of Cæsar--that the Pope himself sided with the two aching, troubled
women, and helped to keep dangerous persons out of the sick-room. But
Alphonso once convalescent, Cæsar could not be refused admittance. He
had no recognized hand in the crime; none could openly accuse him.
Nevertheless, his visit accentuated sinister anticipations. After
making it he remarked grimly, "What was unsuccessful at noon may be
successful at night."
He took every care that it should. One evening the two women--why is
difficult to understand, for both were soaked in heartbreaking
suspicions--left the room for a moment. Cæsar himself must surely have
seen to their absence, for instantly afterwards he slipped in with his
throttler Michelletto, and in a minute or two Lucrezia was a widow.
The agony, sharp enough, had at least been brief.
This time, though there is not a single intimate statement written
about her, Lucrezia must have made some primary outcry, some first
plaint against the cruelty of such a widowhood. The Venetian
ambassador refers to trouble between Lucrezia and her father. He
writes: "Madonna Lucrezia, who is generous and discreet, was formerly
in high favour with the Pope, but he seems no longer to care for her."
The girl was then at Nepi. What had previously occurred no one knows,
but she and her father would certainly not have fallen out if her
meekness had remained predominant. Something must have overstrained
docility and sent her once more out of Rome, either in a spirit of
bitterness or because she exasperated those who controlled her
existence.
But negotiations for a third marriage were not allowed to linger. When
Cæsar had subdued the plucky and intensely wicked Catherine Sforza,
and taken the town of Pesaro, Collenuccio mentions at the end of a
letter, "The Pope intends to give this town as a dowry to Madonna
Lucrezia, and to secure her an Italian husband who will always keep on
good terms with the Valentinois. I do not know if this is the truth,
but it is at least generally believed to be." In the same letter there
is a sketch of Cæsar himself. Collenuccio says, "He is looked upon as
brave, powerful, and generous, and they say he takes care to make much
of wealthy people. He is pitiless in his vengeances; many people have
told me this. He is a man with a great spirit, and set on greatness
and glory, but it seems he prefers to conquer provinces than to
pacify and organize them."
Nevertheless, because the Borgia was a man with an unrelaxed purpose,
he stood, even for a good many of his enemies, as a type of greatness.
Machiavelli actually made him the ideal of governing princedom--the
subtle combination of the lion and the fox.
Machiavelli--himself so extraordinarily interesting--belongs to the
history of Florence and not to that of Rome and Alexander. He never
came actually into contact with Lucrezia, but the following
description of his days, when he was living on his own small estate,
given in a letter to a friend, is so luminously expressive of the
spirit of the age in which he and Lucrezia lived that there seems more
than sufficient reason for including it. He wrote that he got up at
sunrise, and after a couple of hours in the woods, where he examined
the work of the previous day and chatted with the wood-cutters, he
walked to a certain grove with a volume of Dante, Petrarch, or one of
the Latin poets, to read. Subsequently he strolled to the inn,
gossiped with the people there, and by direct intercourse with many
kinds of temperaments studied human nature. For dinner, which he spoke
of as being very simple fare, he returned home; but the meal over, he
made his way back to the inn, where he passed the afternoon playing at
_cricca_ and _tric-trac_ with the host or any one else who happened to
be there. It was not apparently desired to be a peaceful recreation.
Machiavelli states, with a sort of cheerful glow, that they quarrelled
incessantly, and shouted at each other like infuriated lunatics. But
this boisterousness was for the day. When the evening came he once
more went homewards, and this time, having discarded his muddy country
clothes, and having dressed himself with as much care as if he were at
court, he retired to his library till bedtime, and became absorbed in
the works of past writers. This was in reality the intense portion of
his days; all his nature, he wrote, became immersed in the joy of this
intellectual companionship, everything else, every care, every thought
for the present or the future, slipping away from him while he read.
Machiavelli's day contains the whole substance of Renaissance
behaviour--absolute immersion of personality in fine art or good
literature, and along with it the extreme of physical tempestuousness.
These people almost panted with vitality; they were not yet subdued
and wearied through the evil and sorrows of too many past generations.
Lucrezia, like the rest, responded to life far too instinctively to
hold grief for any period. She took the interest of a giddy child in
the suggestions for her third marriage, and this time Alexander had
chosen Alphonso of Ferrara as the person essentially desirable. It was
aiming ambitiously. The besmirched, divorced, and widowed daughter of
a Pope did not constitute a suitable bride for the future Duke of
Ferrara. In fact, the proposal created nothing less than a panic when
laid before the chosen bridegroom and his father. Lucrezia's
reputation was unspeakable.
The charge of incest was among others laid against her. It has been
repeated by Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and the poets Sanozzo and
Pontanus. Nevertheless, nobody now believes it. Neither Alexander nor
Cæsar's conduct makes it supposable. Secondly, all those who spread it
had either personal animosity against the Borgias or repeated it
solely from hearsay. The two poets, besides, were friends and subjects
of the house of Aragon, and in Naples, after the murder of Alphonso,
the word "Borgia" stood for abomination.
But in Ferrara the accusation was unquestioned, and Alphonso
immediately and violently refused to entertain the idea of the
suggested marriage for a second. The old Duke Ercole, though no less
nauseated than his son, was even more harassed and more fearsome. To
offend Alexander involved the security of his duchy. To make matters
worse, when the Pope's proposal reached Ferrara, other wifely
negotiations had already been started with France. And suddenly all
pleasant plans were made parlous and uncertain. Distressed out of
circumlocution, Ercole wrote plainly and rather piteously to the
French ambassador, begging that the French king would not take the
side of the Pope, but would write and support him by stating, which
would have been almost the truth, that another marriage had already
been arranged for. The whole letter was full of stress and pleading,
and though ending with the statement that consent to the union would
in any case never be wrung out of him, and that in addition nothing
would induce his son to take the lady, it showed in every line the
anguish of a revolt that knows its own futility.
Ercole found no friend to help him. His letters, after Louis had
slithered out of the responsibility of abetting him, revealed the
agitation this acceptance of a virtueless future duchess caused at
Ferrara. Exasperated and miserable, he showed openly that he regarded
the king's conduct as a mean refusal of good-fellowship. He gave in
finally, as he was bound to do, but spoke of it with a tragic veracity
as an act "postponing" the honesty of his most ancient house.
The news caused an almost outrageous joy at the Vatican, though
Lucrezia's delight is perhaps the most inexplicable of the abundantly
inexplicable facts of her existence. She could not have believed
herself welcome, and she could not have conceived Alphonso as a
genial, heart-stirring companion. He was emphatically a man satisfied
with men's society. His appearance, besides, was in itself sufficient
to terrorize a woman of light reputation. Lucrezia had seen him and
the remorseless type of the straight, down-reaching nose, the tip
almost touching the upper lip. Physically he was a fine creature, but
cold suspicion glared out of him, and only excessive courage or
excessive obtuseness would have dared to be wholly at ease in his
presence. True, the marriage offered Lucrezia the great opportunity of
her life--the opportunity to retrieve, which should follow everybody's
primary misdemeanours. She rose, moreover, magnificently to the
occasion, and through that fact alone made her life of deep and
touching value. For no past human backsliding should be allowed to
blur the smoothness of a changed and nobler future. There is no object
in life if improvement is to be hindered by cast-off failings. But
though Lucrezia wiped out a bad beginning by the finest possible
maintenance of contrary behaviour, she was not the woman to think of
this beforehand, or to plan deeply and carefully the development of a
new character. She possessed too strongly the wisdom of living in the
moment, and her retrievement came, not from any long-considered
purpose, but _naturally_ when once removed from the constant, forceful
on-thrust of evil people.
The instant the engagement had been brought about, a correspondence
began between her and Ercole. Certainly men were practised liars in
those days. When Ercole wrote to Cæsar Borgia accepting the proposed
marriage, he stated that he did so "on account of the reverence we
feel for the holiness of our Lord, and the admirable character of the
most illustrious Madonna Lucrezia, but even more for the great
affection we have for your Excellence."
When the marriage by proxy had taken place, he further wrote to
Lucrezia herself that not only was the marriage a great happiness and
comfort in his old age, but that he had loved his new daughter-in-law
from the first, both because of the exceptional goodness of her
character, and because of her relationship to the Pope and to Cæsar
Borgia. Just at the end a grain of truth slipped in, when he stated
that he hoped that posterity through her would be assured to his house
in Ferrara.
In spite of these protestations of affection, the D'Estes were
anything but comfortable. What they feared is clear from a letter of
the Ferrarese ambassador, written after a long interview with
Lucrezia. He wrote that she showed nothing but excellent qualities,
and appeared extremely modest, gracious, and decorous, as well as
fervently religious. He adds, "She is very pretty, but doubly so
through the charm of her manners. To be brief, her character seems to
me to warrant no evil anticipations, but to raise rather the most
pleasant expectations." Another writer says of her at this same period
that though she was not regularly beautiful, her golden hair, white
skin, and gentle manners made her a most attractive person. Also he
mentions, "She is very joyous and light-hearted, and is always
laughing." The radiance of a sunny temperament was in reality one of
the best things she brought to her reluctant husband.
At Ferrara, Isabella of Mantua came to help her brother to receive
the Roman widow. Her letters to her husband give a graphic description
of the first days of Lucrezia's third marriage. Isabella--a keen lover
of admiration--was a little put out by rivalry with the new-comer.
Every reference to Lucrezia holds the suspicion of a sting. Even the
simple phrase, "I need not describe Lucrezia's appearance, as you have
already seen her," placed in Isabella's context, conveys an
unfavourable impression.
The irritation of a certain insecurity acidified opinion. Isabella was
an acknowledged beauty; from babyhood she had been accustomed to be
looked upon as a pearl among women. This disreputable Borgia, with
hair equally as golden and with her incomparably magnificent clothes
and jewellery, might produce a division of opinions. Even Isabella's
own lady-in-waiting mentioned to the Marquis of Mantua that the bride
was sweet and attractive in appearance. At any rate, the marchesana
wrote: "Your Excellency enjoys more pleasure in being able to see our
baby son every day than I am able to get out of these festivities....
Bride and bridegroom slept together last night, but we omitted the
usual morning visit, since, to be frank, this is a very chill
marriage. I think that both my suite and I compare favourably with
the rest here, and we shall, at any rate, win the prize for
card-playing, Spagnali having already won 500 gold pieces off the Jew.
To-day there is dancing till four o'clock, after which another play is
to be given...." She wrote again next day, and jealousy had evidently
not been alleged in the interval. "We passed yesterday shut up in our
rooms until four o'clock, as, being Friday, there was no dancing, and
Madonna Lucrezia, in order to outdo the Duchess of Urbino and myself,
insisted upon spending all these hours over her toilet.... Your
Excellency has no cause to envy my presence at this wedding, for never
was a more spiritless and unemotional an affair."
Isabella was a great, lusty creature, and Lucrezia a frail, slight
woman, just arrived from an exhausting journey, after having been
overtired before she started. If she could not charm, besides, in
these first crucial days, her case was lost. Who cares at any time to
champion an ugly woman with every fragment of evidence against her?
But a fresh, smiling, childlike creature disarms antagonism through
sheer contagion of joy. And Lucrezia, as one knows, could be like
sunshine itself in her soft urbanity and good humour. She did her best
to create a pacifying impression, and succeeded. Nevertheless, the
marriage remained, as Isabella had said, a cold one. The bride was so
lightly thought of that not even a pretence of affection could be
asked from Alphonso. Alexander himself only required that he should
actually be her husband, and, satisfied upon that point, remarked to
the Ferrarese ambassador, "It is true that being young he wanders here
and there after pleasure during the day, but he does well."
From the first, however, Lucrezia proved herself wonderful. She had no
sooner reached Ferrara than she shed the soiled Roman personality, as
she might have done a dirty garment. Without slow gradations, she
showed herself a pleasant, sober housewife, lacking even the
self-assurance to make demands upon fidelity. Intellectually, she
could not compete with Isabella of Mantua or Elizabeth of Urbino; but
she had, at least, sufficient vitality of character to turn her back
in one bound, as it were, on her entire past life, as if she were
trying to prove herself an alien personality.
Ercole she conquered immediately. He was old, and this girl, whose
coming had so agitated him, possessed a very graceful attitude towards
her elders. Also he was tired, and those nearing the tragic
termination of existence are always fugitively warmed by the presence
of attentive youthfulness. These two, at least, got on excellently.
Once she fell ill, and had to go away for the sake of her health.
During her absence the old man insisted upon receiving daily notes of
her condition. They are the simplest, most disarming little letters
imaginable. Of all things about Lucrezia, artfulness appears the most
conspicuously absent. Her sins could never have been of the
deliberate, prearranged order. She must have stumbled into them, more
than anything, as a strayed, unshepherded lamb falls over a precipice.
Presently came the customary baby. It was a girl, thus thwarting the
wishes of everybody. But Lucrezia knew some comfort, notwithstanding.
For a time she was dangerously ill, and during this period Alphonso
could hardly be drawn from her bedside. Evidently he had grown aware
that she suited him, and the weak girl in her stuffy bed must have
experienced an inflow of pleasure. She had not been good for nothing.
Her recovery brought her to one of the most fateful events of her
fateful and dramatic existence. Alexander suddenly died. He and Cæsar
had fallen ill simultaneously. Every one spoke of poison, but
Alexander's symptoms were perfectly consistent with apoplexy. His
death, however, placed the new Ferrarese lady in the utmost social
peril. She had become Don Alphonso's wife solely because he and Ercole
deeply feared her father. Now that he was dead, nothing could be
easier than to draw upon the hoard of former scandals and to repudiate
her upon the strength of them. Alexander was no sooner buried, in
fact, than Louis XII. remarked diplomatically to the Ferrarese
ambassador, "I know you never approved of this marriage. Madame
Lucrezia has never been, in fact, the wife of Don Alphonso."
Lucrezia must have grown cold with terror; but nothing calamitous
occurred. Fortunately she had been given sufficient time to show _how_
good she could be. By now neither Ercole nor Alphonso desired to
change the gentle-mannered woman, who was needed to give an heir to
the family. Her placid, light urbanity suited both, and the danger
that threatened for a moment to overwhelm her drew off quietly like
calm, receding waters. But in connection with it one of the principal
friendships of Lucrezia's life at Ferrara comes into prominence.
Bembo, at the time of her mourning--a year after her marriage--had
become intimate enough to give the advice no man troubles to offer to
a woman entirely indifferent to him. He wrote, referring to
Alexander's death, that having been informed that her sorrow was
terrible and extreme, he had called the day before in the hope of
being able, in some small degree, to comfort her. But he owned
regretfully that his visit had proved useless, for he had no sooner
seen her than her forlorn unhappiness, and her piteous, black
draperies, had stricken him with such an overwhelming heartache, that
he had been literally unable to utter a single coherent sentence. He
then went on to beg her--and he wrote with a kind of tender
directness--to try and control her misery, for fear, the circumstances
being evidently not absolutely straightforward, it should be thought
she wept less for her father than for the possible insecurity of her
present position. He reminded her gently that this was not the first
dire calamity that a harsh fate had thrust upon her, and in some
admirably sincere phrases he practically beseeched her, for her own
sake, to show a brave and composed demeanour. He closed the letter by
an almost ingratiating apology for having said so much, and with the
request--so customary with a man in love--that she should take every
care of her health.
Apart from the distress at seeing Lucrezia unhappy, the second part
of the letter shows a man who had received confidences. Lucrezia's
version--perhaps the true one--of the turbid past, was to some extent
in his keeping, and he gave her what warning he could to save her from
adding to her present precarious position in Ferrara.
The friendship of these two is another of the uncertainties in which
everything intimately concerning Lucrezia lies. It has been dragged
unnecessarily into a false appearance of shadiness. A lock of her hair
was found among a packet of her letters to him, and though it is
extremely doubtful that the hair could have been hers even, the
intimacy because of it was immediately regarded as having passed the
bounds of virtue. Yet why should a lock of hair incriminate anybody?
The desire to soften the pains they see is strong in all mothering
women. Lucrezia wore her hair about her shoulders; scissors must have
been conveniently near owing to the amount of needlework done at that
period. Bembo, then a young man, was also for a time very much in
love, therefore capable of little sentimental comforts. A woman's hair
is a fragment of her very personality. To grant a boon like that,
under circumstances of such facility, would need merely a softened or
impulsive moment. Lucrezia, besides, with a husband absorbed in the
manufacture of explosives, may reasonably have been a little grateful
that somebody at least loved her.
[Illustration: SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS
FROM THE SERIES OF FRESCOES PAINTED BY PINTORRICCHIO AT THE
VATICAN]
There is no habit so pernicious as that of deducing evil from trivial
whimsicalities. No judgment that is unaware of the inner
subtleties--the whole complex growth of any given circumstance--does
aright to suppose harmfulness. A lock of hair may be the result of
sheer frowardness, or it may be the outcome of the most unaccompanied
compassion: it may be the meaningless consequence of sudden
unconsidered laughter, or the proffered comfort of a heart with
nothing else to offer. But in all cases it is entirely destitute, by
itself, of anything justifying a condemnatory construction.