elude the notice of historians, the feeble violence and shallow
cunning of Louis the Twelfth; the bustling insignificance of
Maximilian, cursed with an impotent pruriency for renown, rash
yet timid, obstinate yet fickle, always in a hurry, yet always
too late; the fierce and haughty energy which gave dignity to the
eccentricities of Julius; the soft and graceful manners which
masked the insatiable ambition and the implacable hatred of
Caesar Borgia.

We have mentioned Caesar Borgia. It is impossible not to pause
for a moment on the name of a man in whom the political morality
of Italy was so strongly personified, partially blended with the
sterner lineaments of the Spanish character. On two important
occasions Machiavelli was admitted to his society; once, at the
moment when Caesar's splendid villainy achieved its most signal
triumph, when he caught in one snare and crushed at one blow all
his most formidable rivals; and again when, exhausted by disease
and overwhelmed by misfortunes, which no human prudence could
have averted, he was the prisoner of the deadliest enemy of his
house. These interviews between the greatest speculative and the
greatest practical statesman of the age are fully described in
the Correspondence, and form perhaps the most interesting part of
it.

From some passages in The Prince, and perhaps also from some
indistinct traditions, several writers have supposed a connection
between those remarkable men much closer than ever existed. The
Envoy has even been accused of prompting the crimes of the artful
and merciless tyrant. But from the official documents it is clear
that their intercourse, though ostensibly amicable, was in