Whether he referred to himself or not we are
unable to say; at all events, the declaration of his father is
sufficient to prove his designs on the pontifical throne. We further
obtain from Lucrezia Borgia a certain amount of indirect evidence, in
so far as certain passages in the poems of Ercole Strozza may be the
echo of expressions which she as Duchess of Ferrara may easily have
permitted herself to use. Here, too, Cesare's hopes of the Papacy are
chiefly spoken of; but now and then a supremacy over all Italy is
hinted at, and finally we are given to understand that as temporal
ruler Cesare's projects were of the greatest, and that for their sake
he had formerly surrendered his cardinalate. In fact, there can be no
doubt whatever that Cesare, whether chosen Pope or not after the death
of Alexander, meant to keep possession of the pontifical State at any
cost, and that this, after all the enormities he had committed, he
could not as Pope have succeeded in doing permanently. He, if anybody,
could have secularized the States of the Church, and he would have been
forced to do so in order to keep them. Unless we are much deceived,
this is the real reason of the secret sympathy with which Machiavelli
treats the great criminal; from Cesare, or from nobody, could it be
hoped that he 'would draw the steel from the wound,' in other words,
annihilate the Papacy--the source of all foreign intervention and of
all the divisions of Italy.
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