He would chuckle in
talking of the captives with his friends, and make no secret whatever
of the museum of mummies. His victims were mostly men whom he had got
into his power by treachery; some w ere even seized while guests at the
royal table. His conduct to his prime minister, Antonello Petrucci, who
had grown sick and grey in his service, and from whose increasing fear
of death he extorted 'present after present,' was literally devilish.
At length a suspicion of complicity with the last conspiracy of the
barons gave the pretext for his arrest and execution. With him died
Coppola. The way in which all this is narrated in Caracciolo and Porzio
makes one's hair stand on end.
The elder of the King's sons, Alfonso, Duke of Calabria, enjoyed in
later years a kind of co-regency with his father. He was a savage,
brutal profligate, who in point of frankness alone had the advantage of
Ferrante, and who openly avowed his contempt for religion and its
usages . The better and nobler features of the Italian despotisms are
not to be found among the princes of this line; all that they possessed
of the art and culture of their time served the purpose of luxury or
display. Even the genuine Spaniards seem to have almost always
degenerated in Italy; but the end of this cross-bred house (1494 and
1503) gives clear proof of a want of blood.
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