'Fly?' said Machiavelli bewildered.
'When they have perfect knowledge they will make themselves wings. 'Tis a subject upon which I have thought much. Perhaps nothing will come of it. I care not; if it be not I, 'twill be another. The day will come when there shall be wings.'
'Well, let us congratulate each other. Our talk has led us to a new creation. My prince is to be half-god, half-beast; and you have given him wings.'
But the striking of a clock in the neighbouring tower drove Messer Niccolò forth; he had to hasten to the palace that he might learn of the impending execution of the generals.
Isabella Gonzaga, Marchesa of Mantua, by way of congratulation, sent Cesare a carnival gift of a hundred pretty masks in coloured silk.
XV
Cæsar returned to Rome in the beginning of March 1503. The Pope proposed to reward the hero with the Golden Rose, the highest distinction which the Church could confer on her champions. The cardinals assented, and two days later the ceremony of investiture took place. The Roman Curia and the envoys of the great powers assembled in the Sala de' Pontefici, which looks out on the Cortile del Belvedere. Alexander VI., seventy years of age and corpulent, but still vigorous and majestic, ascended the dais, wearing the begemmed mantle and triple crown, the ostrich fans waving over his head.
Trumpets blared, and at a signal from Johann Burckhardt, Master of Ceremonies, the armour-bearers, pages, couriers, and guards of the Duke of Romagna, entered the hall, accompanied by Bartolomeo Capranica, his Master of the Camp, bearing the naked sword of the Gonfaloniere of the Roman Church. The sword was gilded and damascened with delicate designs. First, the Goddess of Fidelity seated on a throne, with the legend, 'Fidelity is stronger than Arms.' Secondly, Julius Cæsar in his triumphal car, with the legend, 'Aut Cæsar aut Nihil.' Thirdly, the passage of the Rubicon with the legend, 'The die is cast.' Lastly, a sacrifice to the Bull of the House of Borgia—naked priestesses burning incense over a human victim, and on the altar the inscription 'Deo optimo maximo Hostia,' and lower, 'In nomine Cæsaris omen.' The human sacrifice to the beast acquired a more terrible meaning from the fact that these engravings and mottos had been ordered at the moment when Cæsar was contemplating the murder of his brother Giovanni, in order to take from him this sword of the standard-bearer of the Church.