Cesare Borgia. Rafael Sabatini

      That was the first important step in the fortunes of the House of Farnese, which was to give dukes to Parma, and reach the throne of Spain (in the person of Isabella Farnese) before becoming extinct in 1758.

1. Istoria d’Italia, tom. V.

2. Touching Lodovico Maria’s by-name of “Il Moro”—which is generally translated as “The Moor,” whilst in one writer we have found him mentioned as “Black Lodovico,” Benedetto Varchi’s explanation (in his Storia Fiorentina) may be of interest. He tells us that Lodovico was not so called on account of any swarthiness of complexion, as is supposed by Guicciardini, because, on the contrary, he was fair; nor yet on account of his device, showing a Moorish squire, who, brush in hand, dusts the gown of a young woman in regal apparel, with the motto, “Per Italia nettar d’ogni bruttura”; this device of the Moor, he tells us, was a rébus or pun upon the word “moro,” which also means the mulberry, and was so meant by Lodovico. The mulberry burgeons at the end of winter and blossoms very early. Thus Lodovico symbolized his own prudence and readiness to seize opportunity betimes.

3. Ferdinand Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.

4. See, inter alia, the letters of Alfonso d’Este and Giovanni Gonzaga on her death, quoted in Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia.

5. “Et multa alia dicta sunt; que hic non scribo, que aut non sunt; vel si sunt, incredibilia” (Infessura, Diarium).

6. La Vie de César Borgia.

7. Thus in the matter of the fifty silver cups tossed by the Pope into the ladies’ laps, “sinum” is the word employed by Infessura—a word which has too loosely been given its general translation of “bosom,” ignoring that it equally means “lap” and that “lap” it obviously means in this instance. M. Yriarte, however, goes a step further, and prefers to translate it as “corsage,” which at once, and unpleasantly, falsifies the picture; and he adds matter to dot the I’s to an extent certainly not warranted even by Infessura.

8. See Corlo, Storia di Milano, and Lodovico’s letter to Charles VIII, quoted therein, lib. vii.

      BOOK II.

       THE BULL PASCANT

       Table of Contents

      Roma Bovem invenit tunc, cum fundatur aratro, Et nunc lapsa suo est ecce renata Bove.

      From an inscription quoted by Bernardino Coaxo.