"Borgia" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... disfavour of his Highness may bring more adherents to a fresh conspiracy of this character, and we should be lost as an independent state. And the peril that menaces us is the peril of being so lost. Not only by defection of our own, but by the force of arms of another. That other is Caesar Borgia. His dominion is spreading like a plague upon the face of this Italy, which he has threatened to eat up like an artichoke—leaf by leaf. Already his greedy eyes are turned upon us, and what power have we—all unready as we are—wherewith successfully to oppose ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... roses in both arms, Even till the top rose touch thee in the throat Where the least thornprick harms; And girdled in thy golden singing-coat, Come thou before my lady and say this: Borgia, thy gold hair's color burns in me, Thy mouth makes beat my blood in feverish rhymes; Therefore so many as these roses be, Kiss me so many times. Then it may be, seeing how sweet she is, That she will stoop herself none otherwise Than a blown vine-branch doth, And ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... without reference to any association with the late President. Their clothes are rich, their swords wear mourning, they go in silence, everything is funereal. In the deeply-draped mirrors strange mirages are seen, as in the coffin scene of "Lucretia Borgia," where all the dusky perspectives bear vistas of gloomy palls. The upholsterers make timid noises of driving nails and spreading tapestry; but save ourselves and these few watchers and workers, only the dead is here. The White House, so ill-appreciated in common times, is seen ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... angels, and stricken them numb. God, father of lies, God, son of perdition, God, spirit of ill, Thy will that for ages was done is undone as a dead God's will. Not Mahomet's sword could slay thee, nor Borgia's or Calvin's praise: But the scales of the spirit that weigh thee are weighted with truth, and it slays. The song of the day of thy fury, when nature and death shall quail, Rings now as the thunders of Jewry, ...
— A Channel Passage and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... breast: their perfume came to me. She was surrounded by decay, dusty desolation, the barrenness of a poverty that is drearier than any of the poverty of the poor; but so might have looked Madama Lucrezia in those old days when the Borgia was God's vicegerent. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... assassination. The Doges of Venice, the Borgias, and the Medici have all had secret poisoners in their pay. The gay, careless race which laughs when the sun shines, are just the same to-day, after the war, as they were in the days of His Holiness Rodrigo Borgia. To-day your superstitious Italian criminal enters the church and prays to the Madonna that his coup—whatever it may be, from profiteering, picking pockets, or the secret assassination of an enemy—may ...
— The Stretton Street Affair • William Le Queux
... 'Lucrezia Borgia at the Tomb of Don Giovanni! You see,' said the artist, 'I have chosen a good name for my painting, ... and it's a great point gained. Forty or fifty years ago, some of those fluffy old painters would have had Venus worshiping ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... was of the world and would be a clod when no longer living—her essence would remain to inspirit some other evil woman—the same malignity in a beautiful shape which appeared in Lais, Messalina, Lucrezia Borgia, the Medici, Ninon, Lecouvreur, Iza, not links of a chain, but the same gem, a ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... of S. Cesario for the key of the church. It is the place where there is a small fifteenth-century villa, with those mullioned windows like Palazzo di Venezia, and a little portico, seeming to tell, among the rubbish heaps and onions, of Riario and Borgia suppers. And in this church and the neighbouring one the impression of the inscriptions recording succession of popes and cardinals, all the magnificent locusts who came swarm after swarm, to devour this land, leaving the broken remains of their hurried magnificence, ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... because, trusting to it, they did not turn their thoughts to nobler methods for preserving that State. Guido Ubaldo, duke of Urbino and son to Duke Federigo, who in his day was a warrior of much renown, but who was driven from his dominions by Cesare Borgia, son to Pope Alexander VI., when afterwards, by a sudden stroke of good fortune, he was restored to the dukedom caused all the fortresses of the country to be dismantled, judging them to be hurtful. For as he was beloved by his subjects, so far as they were concerned he ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... Pius VI., and the celebrated library of the Vatican. The treasures carried away by the French have been restored. Among the paintings of this palace, the most beautiful are Raffaelle's frescos in the stanze and loggie. The principal oil paintings are in the appartamento Borgia, which also contains the Transfiguration, by Raphael. In the Sistine chapel is the Last Judgment by Michael Angelo. The popes have chosen the palace of Monte Cavallo, or the Quirinal palace, with its extensive and beautiful ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner
... and we would bring back some fresh meat for supper. I had no saddle, as mine had been left at the camp a mile distant, so taking the harness from Brigham, I mounted him bareback and started out after the game, being armed with my celebrated buffalo-killer, "Lucretia Borgia,"—a newly-improved breech-loading needle gun, which I ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... the service of the unworthy prince, Cardinal Ippolito of Este, brother of the new Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the First. His eminence, who had been made a prince of the church at thirteen years of age by the infamous Alexander the Sixth (Borgia), was at this period little more than one-and-twenty; but he took an active part in the duke's affairs, both civil and military, and is said to have made himself conspicuous in his father's lifetime for his vices and brutality. He is charged with having ordered a papal messenger ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... stay at Florence, painted the portrait of Ginevra Benci, the reigning beauty of her time. We find that in 1502 he was engaged by Caesar Borgia to visit and report on the fortifications of his territories, and in this office he was employed for two years. In 1503 he formed a plan for turning the course of the Arno, and in the following year he lost his father. In 1505 he modelled the group which we now see over the northern door of the ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 8 (of 8) • Various
... of thinking and betray a levity, indeed, licentiousness, ill according with a religious turn of mind, rose to the position of a great dignitary of the Church and a powerful arbiter of the destinies of his kind. As that was an age when Alexander VI. was a Pope, and Lucretia Borgia the daughter of a Pontiff and consort of a reigning Duke of Italy, we can readily credit the author of the Annals, and laud him for admirable, life-like portraiture, when he says that a character and conduct, such as Piso's, "met ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... to subdue them failed. Though the Inquisition murdered from fifty to one hundred thousand of his most industrious subjects, this done, and still failure! He trusted no man. He probably poisoned his own son, Don Carlos. His treachery was black as Caesar Borgia's; and to his chosen counselors he wrote interminable lies, apparently deeming lying a virtue. He offered fabulous sums of money for the assassination of Queen Elizabeth, of King Henry IV, and of William, Prince of Orange, and finally gave William's ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... and that was by seizing the imagination of a Prince. Directly these men turned their thoughts towards realisation, their attitudes became—what shall I call it?—secretarial. Machiavelli, it is true, had some little doubts about the particular Prince he wanted, whether it was Caesar Borgia of Giuliano or Lorenzo, but a Prince it had to be. Before I saw clearly the differences of our own time I searched my mind for the modern equivalent of a Prince. At various times I redrafted a parallel dedication ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... it. And yet the man who is daily and hourly falling into mistakes on the most common subjects has only to pronounce dogmatically, and he pronounces infallibly. He has but to grasp the pen, with a hand, it may be, like Borgia's, fresh from the poisoned chalice or the stiletto, and straightway he indites lines as holy and pure as ever flowed from the pen of a Paul or ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... American debut of Angiolina Bosio, soprano, at Niblo's Garden, New York City, in "Lucrezia Borgia" ...
— Annals of Music in America - A Chronological Record of Significant Musical Events • Henry Charles Lahee
... St. Ignatius studied, and there won for the Society of Jesus, Laynez, Salmeron, and Babadilla. He afterward founded there a college where Vasquez, Suarez, and St. Francis Borgia expounded the Holy Scriptures. St. Ignatius sent Father de Torres to Salamanca to found the famous college where the illustrious professors, Cardinal de Lugo, Francis Suarez, Maldonatus, Gregory of Valencia, Francis Ribera, and many other illustrious men ...
— The Autobiography of St. Ignatius • Saint Ignatius Loyola
... tendencies of Henry VIII.; another to advance the startling proposition that the "amazing" but, as the world has heretofore held, infamous Emperor Heliogabalus was a great religious reformer, who was in advance of his times; a third to present Lucrezia Borgia to the world as a much-maligned and very virtuous woman; and a fourth to tell us that the "ever pusillanimous" Barere, as he is called by M. Louis Madelin, was "persistently vilified and deliberately misunderstood." ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring
... novelty in this gospel. Its only surprising feature is its revival in the twentieth century. It was taught far more effectively by Machiavelli in his treatise, "The Prince," wherein he glorified the policy of Cesare Borgia in trampling the weaker States of Italy under foot by ruthless terrorism, unbridled ferocity, and the basest deception. Indeed, the wanton destruction of Belgium is simply Borgiaism amplified ten-thousandfold by the mechanical resources of ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various
... of mine to me one day: "Listen, I want you to meet this man X——. You will like him. He is fine. You haven't any idea what a fascinating person he really is. He looks like a Russian Grand Duke. He has the manners and the tastes of a Medici or a Borgia. He is building a great house down on Long Island that once it is done will have cost him five or six hundred thousand. It's worth seeing already. His studio here in the C—— studio building is a dream. It's thick with the loveliest kinds of things. I've helped buy them myself. ...
— Twelve Men • Theodore Dreiser
... chief discourse was ever of love. In that reposeful kingdom, which could in miniature offer to Caterina's courtiers all the pomp and charm without the drawbacks of sovereignty, Pietro Bembo wrote for "Madonna Lucretia Estense Borgia Duchessa illustrissima di Ferrara," and caused to be printed by Aldus Manutius, the leaflets which, under the title Gli Asolani, ne' quali si ragiona d' amore,[8] soon became ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips
... approve? Papa was a member of an Ethical Society at Cambridge. They used sometimes to discuss special things—whether they were right or wrong. I wonder what they would have said to St. Francis Borgia?" ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Alliance of Christian Princes" at the initiative of the Borgia Pope Alexander VII. Louis XII., King of France, and Ferdinand V. of Spain announced their adherence to this effort against the Turk, and Pierre D'Aubusson, the veteran Grand Master of the Knights of Saint John, was nominated ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... alluded to is one of the jac-similes of an ancient planisphere, engraved in bronze about the end of the 15th century, and called the Borgian Table, from its possessor, Cardinal Stephen Borgia, and preserved in his museum ...
— Letters On Demonology And Witchcraft • Sir Walter Scott
... Troilus and Cressida, and probably in the same month, Cleomena in Mrs. Behn's The Young King; later in the autumn, Laura Lucretia in The Feign'd Curtezans; in October, Bellamira, the heroine of Lee's excellent if flamboyant tragedy, Caesar Borgia, to the Borgia of Betterton and Smith's Machiavel. In 1680 her roles were Arviola in Tate's The Loyal General; Julia in Lawrence Maidwell's capital comedy, The Loving Enemies; Queen Margaret in Crowne's The Misery of Civil War, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. II • Aphra Behn
... have latterly been assailed with every resource of logical argument and formidably arrayed proofs, unearthed by tireless diligence and pursuit. Thus we are told that the story of William Tell is a romantic myth; that Lucretia Borgia, far from being a poisoner and murderess, was really a very estimable person; and that the siege of Troy was a very insignificant struggle, between armies counted, not by thousands, but ...
— The Nation in a Nutshell • George Makepeace Towle
... with the step of a wounded scorpion before the sword of D'Artagnan; draped in the dirty Jewish gown of Rodin, he had rubbed his dry hands together, muttering the terrible "Patience, patience!" and, curled on the chair of the Duc d'Este, he had said to Lucretia Borgia, with a sufficiently infernal glance, "Take care and make no mistake. The flagon of gold, madame." When, preceded by a tremolo, he made his entry in the scene, the third gallery trembled, and a sigh of relief greeted the moment when the first ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... and to proceed southward. It was at this point that the most inexplicable event of the entire enterprise occurred. Before the party divided some one attempted to poison the Chevalier La Salle. The poison was a subtle and slow one, similar in its effects to those used by the Borgia family; the secret of its manufacture was thought to be unknown out of Italy. Fortunately he had taken an under or overdose of it, and the effects manifested themselves only in a long illness. He was too far on his journey from Fort Heartbreak when stricken down to return to it, ...
— The Galaxy - Vol. 23, No. 1 • Various
... just occurred to me," said Dryden, "that while we can safely leave the question of Henry the Eighth and his wives to the wisdom of the council, we ought to pay some attention to the advisability of inviting Lucretia Borgia. I'd hate to eat any supper if she came within a mile of the banqueting-hall. If she comes you'll have to appoint a tasting committee before I'll touch a drop of punch or eat a ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... life was largely occupied with events arising out of the ambitions of Pope Alexander VI and his son, Cesare Borgia, the Duke Valentino, and these characters fill a large space of "The Prince." Machiavelli never hesitates to cite the actions of the duke for the benefit of usurpers who wish to keep the states they have seized; he can, indeed, find no precepts to offer so good as the pattern of Cesare ...
— The Prince • Niccolo Machiavelli
... of a great author too conscious of his own views to be angry with his critic! The singular phrase of the lodgings chalked up is a sarcasm explained by this passage in "The Advancement of Learning." "As Alexander Borgia was wont to say of the expedition of the French for Naples, that they came with chalk in their hands to mark up their lodgings, and not with weapons to fight; so I like better that entry of truth that cometh peaceably with chalk to mark up those minds which are capable to lodge and ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... the harryings of the enemy, leaving them no peace. But they were further prompted, indeed, first incited, by the suddenly changed ways of Mocmohoc, who, though hitherto deemed a savage almost perfidious as Caesar Borgia, yet now put on a seeming the reverse of this, engaging to bury the hatchet, smoke the pipe, and be friends forever; not friends in the mere sense of renouncing enmity, but in the sense of ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... the name of the State, and nothing was changed in that respect; the few lads they begot amongst them went to Africa, now as under Pompeius or Scipio; and their corn sack was taken away from them under Depretis or Crispi, as under the Borgia or the Malatesta; and their grape skins soaked in water were taxed as wine, their salt for their soup-pot was seized as contraband, unless it bore the government stamp, and, if they dared say a word of resistance, there were the manacles and the prison under Vittorio and Umberto ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... about many calamities," says Niccolo Macchiavelli, "it was the will of Heaven to show this by omens only too certain: the dome of the church of Santa Regarata was struck by lightning, and Roderigo Borgia ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... telegraph, and poetic justice arrives in less than forty-eight hours by the Oriental Express. Divorce is our weapon of precision, and every pack of cards at the gaming table can distil a poison more destructive than that of the Borgia. The unities of time and place are preserved by wire and rail in a way which would have delighted the hearts of the old French tragics. Perhaps men seek dramatic situations in their own lives less readily since they have ...
— Don Orsino • F. Marion Crawford
... dear, you were so hard-hearted that you were quite a proverb. Why, I have been told that you used to ask girls dreadful puzzling questions, like 'Who was Caesar Borgia?' 'What do you know of Edwin and Morcar?' ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... not keep his word, for he painted only five doges, though many more followed. He had no sooner received his commission from the council of his native place than he began to neglect it, and to paint for the husband of the wicked poisoner—Lucretia Borgia—whose name was Alfonso d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara. It was for him he painted the "Venus Worship," now in the Museum of Madrid, also "The Three Ages," which belongs to Lord Ellesmere, and the "Virgin's ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... absoluto, whom, in our mind's eye, we had long sketched with the dark pencil of a Murillo. On a countenance that we expected to have seen marked by all the dark and fiery passions of a Caesar Borgia, we beheld an expression of bonhomie—a total absence of hauteur, still less of ferocity; in fact, so totally different was he in appearance from all that we had preconceived, that it was with some difficulty we could persuade ourselves that our cicerone was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 583 - Volume 20, Number 583, Saturday, December 29, 1832 • Various
... Highest," how far an accommodation with the King, "when God hath given him so clearly into your power to do justice, can be just before God or good men." The power to do the act is full authority, is absolute command to do it. What other doctrine could a Caesar Borgia, or an Eccelino, the tyrant of Padua, desire to be governed, or rather to be manumitted by from ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... Barrault in the Logis Barrault, built by a former mayor of the city, one time Chancellor of Brittany, was the scene of the magnificent entertainment offered Caesar Borgia in 1497. Afterwards it became the residence of Marie de Medicis; later, a monastic establishment, then a seminary, and lately simply an ordinary private school. Says one writer, "No wonder its remains should be ...
— The Cathedrals of Northern France • Francis Miltoun
... large, handsome, and well disposed, containing some good pictures, particularly one by Rembrandt, of Judas throwing the money on the floor, with a strong expression of guilt and remorse; the whole group fine. In the same room is a portrait of Caesar Borgia, by Titian. The library is a most elegant apartment of about forty by thirty, and of such a height as to form a pleasing proportion; the light is well managed, coming in from the cove of the ceiling, and has an exceeding good effect; at one end is ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... is a son of the renowned painter, Wilhelm von Kaulbach. A pupil of Piloty, he was born at Munich in 1846, and has produced some works of a historic character, such as "Lucrezia Borgia," "Voltaire at Paris," "Louis XI. and His Barber," and "The Last Days of Mozart," but is perhaps still more successful with his admirable pictures of childhood. We must not forget to mention his "Madonna," a work which should add much ...
— Among the Great Masters of Music - Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians • Walter Rowlands
... intellectual abilities, he had received a thorough training in the Macchiavellian theory of politics,[1191] and, during many years of diplomatic service, had enjoyed a fair opportunity for schooling himself in its practical workings. The son of Lucretia Borgia, the grandson of Pope Alexander the Sixth, could scarcely help being an adept at intrigue. Next to this special qualification, his highest recommendations were that he was the brother-in-law of Renee of France, ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... was first attracted to insomnia as the foe of the domestic animal, by the strange appearance of a favorite dog named Lucretia Borgia. I did not name this animal Lucretia Borgia. He was named when I purchased him. In his eccentric and abnormal thirst for blood he favored Lucretia, but in sex he did not. I got him partly because he loved children. The owner said Lucretia Borgia ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the question had just been asked. "No, I don't want Jean. She is wonderful, really, Mrs. Meredith, wonderful! I find myself thinking about her at odd moments, and the more I think the more I am amazed. Lucretia Borgia was a child in arms compared with Jean—poor old Lucretia has been maligned, anyway. There was a woman in the sixteenth century rather like her, and another girl in the early days of New England, who used to denounce witches for the pleasure of seeing them burn, but I can't think of an exact ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... were yet alive, Brunner senior was obliged to bear the loss of the sums of which his wife had drained his coffers, to say nothing of other ills, which had told upon a Herculean constitution, till at the age of sixty-seven the innkeeper had wizened and shrunk as if the famous Borgia's poison had undermined his system. For ten whole years he had supported his wife, and now he inherited nothing! The innkeeper was a second ruin of Heidelberg, repaired continually, it is true, by travelers' hotel bills, much as the remains of the ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... short, the transition easy, from one to the other extreme of injustice; and the peasant who voted for the banishment of the just man, in another sphere and under other circumstances, would have been a Borgia or a Catiline. With this feeling in his bosom, Munro was yet unapprized of its existence. It is not with the man, so long hurried forward by his impulses as at last to become their creature, to analyze either their character ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... in Italy a Venetian troupe of comedians whose ancestors were the first interpreters of the comedies of Goldoni, and several of them claim descent from players who enacted the tragedies and comedies of serious classical literature before the courts of Lucrezia Borgia and Leonora d'Este. In glancing over an Italian play-bill one is invariably struck by the fact that many of the artists bear the same name, and are evidently connected by ties of consanguinity or of marriage. In the Ristori troupe, for instance, there are several actors calling ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... the following six years he wrote no less than twenty-three operas, many of which were cheap imitations of Rossini. In 1880, stung by the success of Bellini, he wrote "Anna Bolena," which inaugurated his second more original period, which included "Lucrecia Borgia" and the immensely popular "Lucia di Lammermoor." The prohibition of his opera "Poliecto," while he was serving as a director of the Naples Conservatory, so exasperated Donizetti that he betook himself to Paris in 1838. There he brought out the "Daughter of the Regiment" and ...
— A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year - Volume Two (of Three) • Edwin Emerson
... possessed of antidotes for each of the sixteen poisons; but there was one venom, outside the sixteen, the composition of which he knew, but to which there was no antidote. On my inquiry he stated that this was the poison used by the Borgia, and ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... few months before in the neighborhood of Jativa, a city that he had always regarded with interest on account of the Borgias having been born in one of its suburbs. The two men were of the same opinion. That almost infantile prelate could have been no other than Caesar Borgia, made Archbishop of Valencia when sixteen years old by his father, the Pope. On their first free day they would examine the portrait with particular attention.... And Ulysses, hanging his head, felt every mouthful sticking ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Satan, and turning over several leaves of his notebook, he rattled out the following names: "Alcibiades, kind of statesman; Beau Brummel, fop; Cagliostro, conjurer; Robespierre, politician; Charles Stuart, Pretender; Warwick, King-maker; Borgia, A., Pope; Ditto, C., toxicologist; Wallenstein, mercenary; Bacon, Roger, man of science; Ditto, F., dishonest official; Tell, W., patriot; Jones, Paul, pirate; Lucullus, glutton; Simon Stylites, eccentric; ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... "is a great thing and applicable to almost every line of endeavor. You can kill people in a scientific manner—witness the late Madame Borgia and others. You can shoe a horse scientifically, beg scientifically or hypnotize a squalling infant into innocuous quietude by the aid of science. Marconi has signalled across the ocean; Santos-Dumont has navigated the air and Austria has proven her ...
— Said the Observer • Louis J. Stellman
... longer exists, apparently, and Nero himself is dead. When I came out and mounted into my cab, my driver showed me with his whip, beyond a garden wall, a second tower, very beautiful against the blue sky, above the slim cypresses, which he said was the scene of the wicked revels of Lucrezia Borgia. I do not know why it has been chosen for this distinction above other towers; but it was a great satisfaction to have it identified. Very possibly I had seen both of these memorable towers in my former Roman ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... Julia look cold and correct enough since they have been turned into stone. Only by the magic of her smile and by the glory of her golden hair do we recognize her who, if all tales are true, might have given a tongue to the walls of the Vatican. We forget the Borgia, with her laboratory of philtres and poisons—we only think that never a duke of all his royal race brought home a lovelier ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... spoken again; and it had been decreed that the streets of Toulon should be razed to the ground. When depravity is placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe. His place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers and ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... for speaking with so famous a man; and in came, in full armor, a short, bull-necked Italian, evidently of immense strength, of the true Caesar Borgia stamp. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... the moral character, are the Prince of Machiavelli, Caesar Borgia, or the Iago of Shakespeare. Who can help admiring their strength of will, although their activity is only economic, and is opposed to what we hold moral? Who can help admiring the ser Ciappelletto of Boccaccio, who, even on his death-bed, pursues and realizes his ideal ...
— Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic • Benedetto Croce
... think of such things, and physicians to give names to them, would have been called monomania; so haunting, so incessant, were the thoughts that pressed upon him. I have somewhere read a forcibly described punishment among the Italians, worthy of a Borgia. The supposed or real criminal was shut up in a room, supplied with every convenience and luxury; and at first mourned little over his imprisonment. But day by day he became aware that the space between the walls of his apartment was narrowing, and then he understood the end. Those painted walls ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... devotion; and, were they not sincere, I doubt much of his well-being, {47} and, I fear, he was too well seen in the aphorisms and principles of Nicholas the Florentine, and in the reaches {48} of Cesare Borgia. ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... deeds of unusual horror; enormousness, of things of unusual size. We speak of the enormity of CA|sar Borgia's crimes, of the enormousness of the ...
— Practical Exercises in English • Huber Gray Buehler
... the spring of the year, in that mountain eyrie beloved of the Muses and coveted of the Borgia, that a little boy stood looking out of a grated casement into the calm, sunshiny day. He was a pretty boy, with hazel eyes, and fair hair cut straight above his brows; he wore a little blue tunic with some embroidery about the throat of it, and had ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... aggressive than ever, and threatening messages arrived from the Vatican. Attempts by his friends, some of them of high and influential position, to defend him, only the more enraged Pope Alexander Borgia. He summoned a consistory of fourteen Dominican theologians who were ordered to investigate Savonarola's conduct and doctrine. The strange issue was he was charged with having been the cause of all the misfortunes that had befallen ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... that Chinese poison called in the northern provinces hlangkuna. By a series of dangerous experiments I had convinced myself that it was almost identical with contarella, the preparation made notorious by the Borgia family. Therefore I concluded that contarella came to Rome from the East, possibly via Palestine. Inoculating with hlangkuna, I found, produced death in two hours (contarella—one hour and forty-five minutes) leaving no trace by which the means employed ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... together in a slight frown. With that expression on his face he looked very much like an Italian poisoner of old time,—the kind of man whom Caesar Borgia might have employed to give the happy dispatch to his enemies by some sure and undiscoverable means known only to ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... day on which I was arrested," returned the Abbe Faria; "and as the emperor had created the kingdom of Rome for his infant son, I presume that he has realized the dream of Machiavelli and Caesar Borgia, which was to ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... femmes," and embraced V. Hugo's countermaxim, "Le gout c'est la raison du genie"; but his delicate, beauty-loving nature could feel nothing but disgust at what has been called the rehabilitation of the ugly, at such creations, for instance, as Le Roi s'amuse and Lucrece Borgia, of which, according to their author's own declaration, this is ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... the Portuguese treaty of 1470, and why King John now sought its enforcement by the present Pope. But Ferdinand and Isabella also were hurrying messengers to Rome. The pontiff at this time happened to be not an Italian but a Spaniard, Alexander Borgia, born a subject of Ferdinand's own kingdom of Aragon. Ferdinand knew well how to judge this shrewd Aragonese character, and what arguments were most likely to appeal to it. He told the Spanish ambassadors to say that Spain would immediately set to work to convert the vast new lands ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... their castles in town; and their feuds meant battles also between the citizens who obeyed or thwarted them. Houses were sacked and burnt, and occasionally razed to the ground, for the ploughshare and the salt-sower to go over their site. A few years later, when Pope Borgia dredged the Tiber for the body of his son, the boatmen of Ripetta reported that so many bodies were thrown over every night that they no longer heeded such occurrences. And when, two centuries later, the Corsinis ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... short run on the Mississippi. The funny Negro pilot. Down the Danube and the Po. Attacked by fever. Lucretia Borgia's castle. ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... Muzio beheld Valeria for the first time at a sumptuous popular festival, got up at the command of the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole, son of the famous Lucrezia Borgia, in honour of some distinguished grandees who had arrived from Paris on the invitation of the Duchess, the daughter of Louis XII, King of France. Side by side with her mother sat Valeria in the centre of an elegant tribune, ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... letter informed you that I had resolved on making no further use of the Formula for recomposing some of the Borgia Poisons (erroneously supposed to be destroyed) left to me on the death of my lamented Hungarian friend—my master ...
— Jezebel • Wilkie Collins
... second Chancery of the Signoria, which office he retained till the downfall of the Florentine Republic in 1512. His unusual ability was soon recognized, and in 1500 he was sent on a mission to Louis XII. of France, and afterward on an embassy to Caesar Borgia, the lord of Romagna, at Urbino. Machiavelli's report and description of this and subsequent embassies to this prince, shows his undisguised admiration for the courage and cunning of Caesar, who was a master in the application of the principles afterwards exposed in such ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... historic romance of Rome ecclesiastical. The great romance of Rome: its holy footsteps of St. Peter, its aerial dome of Michael Angelo, its Vatican of ancient manuscripts, of beauteous statue and chariot—the great romance of Rome, its Borgia, its dungeons and flames of the Inquisition. A picture of two figures only, but consider the background. Consider the thousands of broad English acres that now support great monasteries and convents in quiet country places ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... outrage on the personal liberty of French subjects, than Hindman's arrests and committal to the Penitentiary of suspected persons? Was Tristan l'Hermite any more the minister of tyranny, than his Provost Marshals? or Caligula, Caesar Borgia or Colonel Kirke any more cruel and remorseless than he, that you have sustained all his acts, and made all his atrocities your own? Take care, sir! You are not so high, that you may not be reached by the arm of justice. The President is above you both, and God ...
— The American Indian as Participant in the Civil War • Annie Heloise Abel
... exploit, it lacked the fullness of poetic justice, since the chief offender escaped him. While Gourgues was sailing towards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in favor at court, where he told to approving ears how he had butchered the heretics. Borgia, the sainted General of the Jesuits, was his fast friend; and two years later, when he returned to America, the Pope, Paul the Fifth, regarding him as an instrument for the conversion of the Indians, wrote him a letter with his benediction. He re-established his power in Florida, rebuilt Fort San ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Philip and Queene Mary hereby do disannul Pope Alexanders diuision. [Footnote: Alexander VI, the father of Lucretia and Casar Borgia, had divided the Indies between Spain and Portugal.]]. And furthermore, we of our ample and abundant grace, meere motion, and certaine knowledge, for vs, our heires, and successors, as much as in vs is, haue giuen and granted, and by these presents doe giue ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, • Richard Hakluyt
... There is an ample variety of tenacious womanly characters between the extremes marked by Miriam beating her timbrels, and Cleopatra applying the asp; Cornelia showing her Roman jewels, and Guyon rapt in God; Lucrezia Borgia raging with bowl and dagger, and Florence Nightingale sweetening the memory of the Crimean war with philanthropic deeds. What group of men indeed can be brought together, more distinct in individuality, more ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... in the same year, for his fellow-scholar, at first his friend, later his rival. When a young man Titian spent some time in Ferrara; there he painted his 'Bacchus and Ariadne,' and a portrait of Lucrezia Borgia. In 1512, when Titian was thirty-five years of age, he was commissioned by the Venetians to continue the works in the great council-hall, which the advanced age of Gian Bellini kept him from finishing. Along with this commission Titian was appointed ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... to me almost incredible in the idea of a young Galilean peasant imagining that he could bear on his own shoulders the burden of the entire world; all that had already been done and suffered, and all that was yet to be done and suffered: the sins of Nero, of Caesar Borgia, of Alexander VI., and of him who was Emperor of Rome and Priest of the Sun: the sufferings of those whose names are legion and whose dwelling is among the tombs: oppressed nationalities, factory children, thieves, people in prison, outcasts, those who are dumb under oppression and ...
— De Profundis • Oscar Wilde
... descent—great descent, it may be added, remembering the moral depths attained; but to those who care for the welfare of the people, it is a mutation of no slight interest. I am glad to think, as has been shown in a recent novel, that Lucrezia Borgia was not so black as she has been painted; yet in the early days of June and July, when strawberries and raspberries are ripening, I fancy that most of us can dismiss her and her kin from mind as we observe Nature's alchemy in our gardens. When we think ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... Oklahomite title of Wild Bill McLean, were wild enough in all conscience; but they left very little of my friend's illusion that members of the Upper Ten could not be accused of crimes. Nero and Borgia were quite presentable people compared with Senator Hamon when Wild Bill McLean had done with him. But the difference was deeper, and even in a sense more delicate than this. There is a certain tone about English trials, ...
— What I Saw in America • G. K. Chesterton
... Orleans,[2702] and her two sons, Pierre and Jean du Lys, demanded the revision.[2703] By this legal artifice the case was converted from a political into a private suit. At this juncture Nicolas V died, on the 24th of March, 1455. His successor, Calixtus III, a Borgia, an old man of seventy-eight, by a rescript dated the 11th of June, 1455, authorised the institution of proceedings. To this end he appointed Jean Jouvenel des Ursins, Archbishop of Reims, Guillaume Chartier, Bishop of Paris, and Richard ...
— The Life of Joan of Arc, Vol. 1 and 2 (of 2) • Anatole France
... Borgia, supreme from birth [Ep. 3. As loveliest born on earth Since earth bore ever women that were fair; Scarce known of her own house If daughter or sister or spouse; Who holds men's hearts yet helpless with her hair; The direst of divine things made, Bows down her amorous aureole half ...
— Songs of the Springtides and Birthday Ode - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne—Vol. III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... beast of prey and the man of prey (for instance, Caesar Borgia) are fundamentally misunderstood, "nature" is misunderstood, so long as one seeks a "morbidness" in the constitution of these healthiest of all tropical monsters and growths, or even an innate "hell" ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... baritone in my father's company, a tremendous man, with shining black eyes, and a voice like a great bell—quite pretty at the top, though: he must have been sixty at least; and he was very fat; but he was the most dignified man I ever saw. You should have heard him do the Duke in Lucrezia Borgia, or sing Pro Peccatis from Rossini's Stabat Mater! I was ten years old when he was with us, and my grand ambition was to sing with him when I grew up. He would shake his head if he saw Susanetta now. I would rather hear ...
— The Irrational Knot - Being the Second Novel of His Nonage • George Bernard Shaw
... less? As much that end a constant course requires Of showers and sunshine, as of man's desires; As much eternal springs and cloudless skies, As men forever temperate, calm, and wise. If plagues or earthquakes break not Heaven's design, Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline? Who knows but He, whose hand the lightning forms, Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the storms; Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind, Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge mankind? From pride, from pride, ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... we defend ourselves, to snatch our souls from us and fashion them afresh into souls which shall bear the stamp of their own image. Of their souls we have seen samples; they date back to the dark ages—the souls of Cain, Judas and Caesar Borgia were not unlike them. Of what such souls are capable they have given us examples in Belgium, captured France and in the living dead whom they return by way of Evian. We would rather forego our bodies than so exchange our souls. A Germanised ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... top, and it isn't much matter what comes next. Here are shoals of noble families uprooted and lying round like those aloes that the gardener used to throw over the wall in spring-time; and there is that great boar of a Caesar Borgia turned in to batten and riot over our ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... you know. Lucrezia Borgia and Mediaeval Italy. Woman's love and woman's hatred are always the same, but this particular manifestation of it seems to me out of ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Lucretia Borgia. "Calpurnia just looked out of the window and discovered that we ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... auditor died, since the controversy over the arms, [165] they had ceased intercourse [with us]. Notwithstanding all this, they always directed their efforts to the end that the Society should yield; and, the octave of the naval feast falling on the very day of St. Francis de Borgia, we had to delay until the octave the feast and sermon for the saint, and went in a body to the church. Great rejoicing was displayed in the city; much artillery was fired; the [Dominican] provincial Marron ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... its supernatural content and its supernatural channels of grace. These remain unaffected, whether the human organism is exalted or debased. The sacraments and devotions and practices of worship, are in themselves as potent if a Borgia sits in the chair of St. Peter as they are if a Hildebrand, and Innocent III or a Leo XIII is the occupant; nevertheless every weakening or degradation of the visible organism affects, and inevitably, the attitude of men towards ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram
... study, involving once more an endless number of the most unpleasant contacts? No, give me the past. It doesn't change; it's all there in black and white, and you can get to know about it comfortably and decorously and, above all, privately—by reading. By reading I know a great deal of Caesar Borgia, of St. Francis, of Dr. Johnson; a few weeks have made me thoroughly acquainted with these interesting characters, and I have been spared the tedious and revolting process of getting to know them by personal contact, which I should have to do if they were living now. How gay and delightful life ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... prophets, labouring with the secret of the earth and the burden of mystery, that guard and glorify the chapel of Pope Sixtus at Rome—do they not tell us more of the real spirit of the Italian Renaissance, of the dream of Savonarola and of the sin of Borgia, than all the brawling boors and cooking women of Dutch art can teach us of the real spirit of ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... he did not experience. The object of art is to fill up what is missing in the artist's experience: "Art begins where life leaves off," said Wagner. A man of action is rarely pleased with stimulating works of art. Borgia and Sforza patronised Leonardo. The strong, full-blooded men of the seventeenth century; the apoplectic court at Versailles (where Fagon's lancet played so necessary a part); the generals and ministers who harassed the Protestants and burned the Palatinate—all these ...
— Musicians of To-Day • Romain Rolland
... notice that he carelessly retained her contributions to the game, and he reached his studio with them in his hand. Hedrick had entered the 'teens and he was a reader: things in his head might have dismayed a Borgia. ...
— The Flirt • Booth Tarkington
... Florence, of Havre, of Nantes and of Toulouse. Laurens delights in the Middle Ages, gloomy and stately periods of ecclesiastical domination and feudal violence. He is the painter of tortures and of tombs (the Exhumation of Pope Formosus, The Interdict, Francis Borgia before the Coffin of Isabella of Portugal), but his vigorous and severe genius never suffers him to fall into overstrained action and theatrical artifice. He does not move us by declamatory gestures and forced attitudes. Nothing can be more simple, yet nothing more affecting, than the Execution ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... firmly closed, it reminded one irresistibly of that portrait of an unknown gentleman in the Borghese gallery, that profound and mysterious work of art in which the fascinated imagination has sought to recognise the features of the divine Cesare Borgia depicted by the divine Sanzio. As soon as the lips parted in a smile the resemblance vanished, and the square, even dazzlingly white teeth lit up a mouth as fresh and ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... of contraband tobacco, whereupon he was marched off to court, fined eighty francs, and jilted by his perfidious lady-love, who speedily transferred her affections. If she had been born in the right class and the right century, Peppina would have made an admirable and brilliant Borgia. ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Muzzio saw Valeria for the first time at a magnificent public festival, celebrated at the command of the Archduke of Ferrara, Ercol, son of the celebrated Lucrezia Borgia, in honour of some illustrious grandees who had come from Paris on the invitation of the Archduchess, daughter of the French king, Louis XII. Valeria was sitting beside her mother on an elegant tribune, built after a design of Palladio, ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... reconquered by foreign invaders. Unable, as a celibate ecclesiastic, to form his dominions into a strong hereditary kingdom; unable, as the hierophant of a priestly caste, to unite his people in the bonds of national life; unable, as Borgia tried to do, to conquer the rest of Italy for himself; and form it into a kingdom large enough to have weight in the balance of power; the Pope has been forced, again and again, to keep himself on his throne by intriguing with foreign princes, ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... man destined to do great deeds had he lived his life amid environments which were suited to him; a man treated by Nature as a favorite child, for she gave him courage, self-possession, and the political sagacity of a Cesar Borgia. But education had not bestowed upon him that nobility of conduct and ideas without which nothing great is possible in any walk of life. He was not regretted, because of the perfidy with which his adversary, who was a worse man than he, had contrived to bring him into disrepute. His death put an ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... poisoned his uncle Appia'no; Gazella, that she had caused one of his relatives to be drowned in the Tiber. Indignant at these acts of wickedness, Gennaro struck off the B from the escutcheon of the duke's palace at Ferrara, changing the name Borgia into Orgia. Lucrezia prayed the duke to put to death the man who had thus insulted their noble house, and Gennaro was condemned to death by poison. Lucrezia, to save him, gave him an antidote, and let him out of prison ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... great difference which existed between the words of Christ and those that were preached by the Popes and the Bishops. In the year 1511, he visited Rome on official business. Alexander VI, of the family of Borgia, who had enriched himself for the benefit of his son and daughter, was dead. But his successor, Julius II, a man of irreproachable personal character, was spending most of his time fighting and building and did not impress this serious minded ...
— The Story of Mankind • Hendrik van Loon
... thought himself injured when the comedian pretended to wear a fine coat." Powel, the tragedian, surveying the dress worn by Cibber as Lord Foppington, fairly lost his temper, and complained, in rude terms, that he had not so good a suit in which to play Caesar Borgia. Then, again, when Betterton proposed to "mount" a tragedy, the comic actors were sure to murmur at the cost of it. Dogget especially regarded with impatience "the costly trains and plumes of tragedy, in which, knowing himself to be useless, he thought ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Lucretia Borgia is the most unfortunate woman in modern history. Is this because she was guilty of the most hideous crimes, or is it simply because she has been unjustly condemned by the world to bear its curse? The question has never been answered. Mankind is ever ready to discover the personification ...
— Lucretia Borgia - According to Original Documents and Correspondence of Her Day • Ferdinand Gregorovius
... and discovers that in a day he has distanced him by a sphere. He and Ralph and the curate of Lobourne join in their walks, and raise classical discussions on ladies' hair, fingering a thousand delicious locks, from those of Cleopatra to the Borgia's. "Fair! fair! all of them fair!" sighs the melancholy curate, "as are those women formed for our perdition! I think we have in this country what will match the Italian or the Greek." His mind flutters to Mrs. Doria, Richard blushes ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... even a little overburdened with episodes and people. One constantly rubs shoulders with Leonardo da Vinci, the duchess Beatrice of Este, regent of Milan, the favorite Lucrecia Crivelli, the mysterious Gioconda, Charles VIII, Louis XII and Francis I, kings of France, and also with Caesar Borgia; we find here the preaching of Savonarola, the death of the pope Alexander VI (Borgia), Marshal Trivulce, the triumphal entry of the French into Milan, the diplomacy of Niccolo Machiavelli. In fact, as has been said above, there are ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... was a different man from Guarini. I cannot imagine him listening to the sparrows; I cannot imagine him plucking a flower,—except he have some courtly gallantry in hand, perhaps toward the Borgia. He was one of those pompous, stiff, scholastic prigs who wrote by rules of syntax; and of syntax he is dead. He was clever and learned; he wrote in Latin, Italian, Castlian: but nobody reads him; he has only a little crypt in the "Autori Diversi." I think ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... public opinion will not seek to interfere with the sacred activities of the pick-pocket, the forger, the sweater, the roue, every one of whom may plead that he is but carrying out the Divine ordinances; if Alexander Borgia's perjuries, poisonings and debaucheries "break not Heaven's design," but are "ordained of God for some purpose," morality itself becomes an ...
— Problems of Immanence - Studies Critical and Constructive • J. Warschauer
... know where I am living, and for that reason you can come and see me whenever you like. As a proof of my sincerity, may I suggest that you give me the pleasure of your company at dinner to-night. Oh, you needn't be afraid. I'm not a Caesar Borgia. I shall not poison your meat, and your wine will not be drugged. It will be rather a unique experience, detective and criminal dining together, will it not? ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... Yankee characters. (See pages 19, 20, "Specimen Days.") It was here (some years later than the date in the headline) I also heard Mario many times, and at his best. In such parts as Gennaro, in "Lucrezia Borgia," he was inimitable—the sweetest of voices, a pure tenor, of considerable compass and respectable power. His wife, Grisi, was with him, no longer first-class or young—a fine Norma, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... who has taken a fancy to Will," said Fred with a grin, "is capable of more atrocities than all the Turks between here and Stamboul! She looks to me like Santanita, Cleopatra, Salome, Caesar's wife, and all the Borgia ladies rolled in one. There's something added, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... him, and the papal sentence of excommunication goes forth. We, looking as we deem on the Papacy trembling to its fall, can very imperfectly enter into the awful gravity of this struggle. To us, the prohibition of an Alexander Borgia may seem of small account, and his anathema of small weight in the councils of the universe. But it was otherwise with Savonarola: the Monk-apostle, trained and vowed to unqualified obedience, has thus forced on him the most difficult problem of his time. This to him more than earthly authority, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown
... Daughter of old Mr. Borgia, a wealthy Italian gentleman. Lucrezia was one of the first ladies of her time. Beautiful beyond description, of brilliant and fascinating manners, she created an unmistakable sensation. It was a burning sensation. Society doted upon ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various |
