The Borgias | Page 9

a great cry breaking
simultaneously frog a hundred thousand breasts followed the silence
"Non v'e fumo! There is no smoke!" In other words, "We have a pope."
At this moment the rain began to fall; but no one paid any attention to it,
so great were the transports of joy and impatience among all the people.
At last a little stone was detached from the walled window which gave
on the balcony and upon which all eyes were fixed: a general shout
saluted its fall; little by little the aperture grew larger, and in a few
minutes it was large enough to allow a man to come out on the balcony.
The Cardinal Ascanio Sforza appeared; but at the moment when he was
on the point of coming out, frightened by the rain and the lightning, he
hesitated an instant, and finally drew back: immediately the multitude
in their turn broke out like a tempest into cries, curses, howls,
threatening to tear down the Vatican and to go and seek their pope
themselves. At this noise Cardinal Sforza, more terrified by the popular
storm than by the storm in the heavens, advanced on the balcony, and
between two thunderclaps, in a moment of silence astonishing to
anyone who had just heard the clamour that went before, made the
following proclamation:
"I announce to you a great joy: the most Eminent and most Reverend
Signor Roderigo Lenzuolo Borgia, Archbishop of Valencia, Cardinal-
Deacon of San Nicolao-in-Carcere, Vice-Chancellor of the Church, has
now been elected Page, and has assumed the name of Alexander VI."
The news of this nomination was received with strange joy. Roderigo
Borgia had the reputation of a dissolute man, it is true, but libertinism
had mounted the throne with Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII, so that for
the Romans there was nothing new in the singular situation of a pope
with a mistress and five children. The great thing for the moment was
that the power fell into strong hands; and it was more important for the
tranquillity of Rome that the new pope inherited the sword of St. Paul
than that he inherited the keys of St. Peter.
And so, in the feasts that were given on this occasion, the dominant

character was much more warlike than religious, and would have
appeared rather to suit with the election of some young conqueror than
the exaltation of an old pontiff: there was no limit to the pleasantries
and prophetic epigrams on the name of Alexander, which for the
second time seemed to promise the Romans the empire of the world;
and the same evening, in the midst of brilliant illuminations and
bonfires, which seemed to turn the town into a lake of flame, the
following epigram was read, amid the acclamation of the people:
"Rome under Caesar's rule in ancient story At home and o'er the world
victorious trod; But Alexander still extends his glory: Caesar was man,
but Alexander God."
As to the new pope, scarcely had he completed the formalities of
etiquette which his exaltation imposed upon him, and paid to each man
the price of his simony, when from the height of the Vatican he cast his
eyes upon Europe, a vast political game of chess, which he cherished
the hope of directing at the will of his own genius.


CHAPTER II
The world had now arrived at one of those supreme moments of history
when every thing is transformed between the end of one period and the
beginning of another: in the East Turkey, in the South Spain, in the
West France, and in the North German, all were going to assume,
together with the title of great Powers, that influence which they were
destined to exert in the future over the secondary States. Accordingly
we too, with Alexander VI, will cast a rapid glance over them, and see
what were their respective situations in regard to Italy, which they all
coveted as a prize.
Constantine, Palaeologos Dragozes, besieged by three hundred
thousand Turks, after having appealed in vain for aid to the whole of
Christendom, had not been willing to survive the loss of his empire,

and had been found in the midst of the dead, close to the Tophana Gate;
and on the 30th of May, 1453, Mahomet II had made his entry into
Constantinople, where, after a reign which had earned for him the
surname of 'Fatile', or the Conqueror, he had died leaving two sons, the
elder of whom had ascended the throne under the name of Bajazet II.
The accession of the new sultan, however, had not taken place with the
tranquillity which his right as elder brother and his father's choice of
him should have promised. His younger brother, D'jem, better known
under the name of Zizimeh, had