[The Pope kisses Cesare coldly on his forehead, and
blesses him. Cesare passes out.
ALEXANDER.
How swift he moves away—as if
With something he had snatched!
Is it my soul?
ACT II
SCENE I
Rome: the Piazza Navona.
In the centre an antique statue stands, half-excavated, dressed up and painted to represent Proteus as an old man, one of his arms being turned into a dragon, one into a bull. This is the statue called Pasquino, and it flutters with epigrams and satires. To the left the door and steps of the Church of San Giacomo. To the right some houses: behind Pasquino, the Orsini Palace.
It is early—the market-people are beginning to arrive.
The Lord Cardinal Cesare Borgia, in the caftan and turban of a Turk, comes out of one of the houses with the Turkish Prince Djem. He stands and looks round from the centre of the Piazza, near Pasquino, and close to the adjacent stone-seat belonging to the old Stadium of Domitian.