predecessors. Ferdinand was paying somewhat dearly for a simple promise;
but on the keeping of this promise the legitimacy of his power wholly
depended. For the kingdom of Naples was a fief of the Holy See; and to
the pope alone belonged the right of pronouncing on the justice of each
competitor's pretensions; the continuance of this investiture was
therefore of the highest conceivable importance to Aragon just at the
time when Anjou was rising up with an army at her back to dispossess her.

For a year after he mounted the papal throne, Alexander VI had made great
strides, as we see, in the extension of his temporal power. In his own
hands he held, to be sure, only the least in size of the Italian
territories; but by the marriage of his daughter Lucrezia with the lord
of Pesaro he was stretching out one hand as far as Venice, while by the
marriage of the Prince of Squillace with Dona Sancia, and the territories
conceded to the Duke of Sandia, he was touching with the other hand the
boundary of Calabria.

When this treaty, so advantageous for himself, was duly signed, he made
Caesar Cardinal of Santa Maria Novella, for Caesar was always complaining
of being left out in the distribution of his father's favours.

Only, as there was as yet no precedent in Church history for a bastard's
donning the scarlet, the pope hunted up four false witnesses who declared
that Caesar was the son of Count Ferdinand of Castile; who was, as we
know, that valuable person Don Manuel Melchior, and who played the
father's part with just as much solemnity as he had played the husband's.

The wedding of the two bastards was most splendid, rich with the double
pomp of Church and King. As the pope had settled that the young bridal
pair should live near him, Caesar Borgia, the new cardinal, undertook to