More than a year had passed since Giovanni Boltraffio had been received as a novice in the Convent of San Marco.
On a winter's day towards the close of the carnival of 1496, shortly after noon, Fra Girolamo was writing the account of a vision which had lately appeared to him. He had seen two crosses waving above the city of Rome, one black and enveloped in storm, inscribed—'The Cross of the fury of the Lord'; the other of gleaming azure, with the inscription—'The Cross of the Lord's mercy.'
February sunshine flooded the narrow cell with its white and naked walls, great black crucifix, and the thick parchment books in antique leather. Now and then from the blue sky came the joyous twitter of the swallows.
Fra Girolamo felt unwonted weariness, and now and then trembled. Laying down his pen, he dropped his head on his hands, closed his eyes, and meditated upon what he had that morning heard about Pope Alexander VI. from Fra Paolo, a monk who had been on a secret mission to Rome. Monstrous images like those described in the Apocalypse passed and whirled before the mind of the prior; he saw the blood-stained bull of the shield of the Borgias, reminding him of Apis, the heathen god; the golden calf borne before the pontiff instead of the humble Lamb of God; nightly orgies at the Vatican in the presence of the Holy Father, of his favourite daughter, and of the College of Cardinals; the beautiful Giulia Farnese, mistress of the sexagenarian pope, and the model for contemporary portraits of the saints; his two sons, Cesare the young Cardinal of Valenza, and Giovanni the Duke of Candia, who out of criminal love for Lucrezia their sister, hated each other to the point of fratricide. And haunted by what Fra Paolo had scarcely dared to whisper, the tale of the strange relations between the pope and this Lucrezia his daughter, Girolamo trembled.
'But no, 'tis calumny. It were too great an enormity! God sees that I cannot believe it,' he murmured.
But in the depths of his soul he felt that nothing was impossible in that terrible nest of the Borgias, and drops of cold sweat stood out upon his forehead. He had fallen on his knees before the crucifix, when a low knocking was heard at the door of his cell.
'Who is it?'
'It is I, father.'
He recognized the voice of his trusty friend, Fra Domenico Buonvicino.
'Ricciardo Becchi, secret legate from the pope, prays for an audience.'