So far have matters gone in this connection that who undertakes to set
down to-day the history of Cesare Borgia, with intent to do just and
honest work, must find it impossible to tell a plain and straightforward
tale--to present him not as a villain of melodrama, not a monster,
ludicrous, grotesque, impossible, but as human being, a cold, relentless
egotist, it is true, using men for his own ends, terrible and even
treacherous in his reprisals, swift as a panther and as cruel where his
anger was aroused, yet with certain elements of greatness: a splendid
soldier, an unrivalled administrator, a man pre-eminently just, if
merciless in that same justice.

To present Cesare Borgia thus in a plain straightforward tale at this
time of day, would be to provoke the scorn and derision of those who have
made his acquaintance in the pages of that eminent German scholar,
Ferdinand Gregorovius, and of some other writers not quite so eminent yet
eminent enough to serve serious consideration. Hence has it been
necessary to examine at close quarters the findings of these great ones,
and to present certain criticisms of those same findings. The author is
overwhelmingly conscious of the invidious quality of that task; but he is
no less conscious of its inevitability if this tale is to be told at all.

Whilst the actual sources of historical evidence shall be examined in the
course of this narrative, it may be well to examine at this stage the
sources of the popular conceptions of the Borgias, since there will be no
occasion later to allude to them.

Without entering here into a dissertation upon the historical romance, it
may be said that in proper hands it has been and should continue to be
one of the most valued and valuable expressions of the literary art. To
render and maintain it so, however, it is necessary that certain well-