Caesar or Nothing by Pio Baroja

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"He is of Mediterranean race, a dolichocephalic Iberian; he has the
small melon-shaped head, the sensual features. He is leptorrhine. He
comes of an intriguing, commercial, lying, and charlatan race."

"To which you have the honour to belong," said Kennedy, laughing.

"Certainly."

"They say this man was a great enthusiast about his countrymen and the
customs of his country. These tiles, which are remains of the original
floor, and the plates you see here, are Valencian. A Spanish painter
told me that several letters of Alexander VI's are preserved in the
archives of the cathedral at Valencia, one among them asking to have
tiles sent."

Kennedy walked forward a little and planted himself before an Assumption
of the Virgin, and said:

"It is supposed that this gloomy man dressed in red, with a little
fringe of hair on his brow, is a brother of the Pope's."

"A bad type to encounter in the Tribunal of the Inquisition," said
Caesar; "imagine what this red-robed fellow would have done with that
Jew at the Excelsior, Señor Pereira, if he had happened to have him in
his power."

"In the soffits," Kennedy went on, "as you see, are repetitions of the
symbols of Iris, Osiris, and the bull Apis, doubtless because of their
resemblance to the Christian symbols, and also because the bull Apis
recalls the bull in the Borgia arms." "Their arms were a bull?"

"Yes; it was a 'scutcheon invented by some king-at-arms or other, a
symbol of ferocity and strength."

"Were they of a noble family, these Borgias?"

"No, probably not. Though I believe some people suppose that they
were descended from the Aragonese family of Atares. Now that we know
Alexander VI, let us take a glance at his court. It has often been said,
and is no doubt taken from Vasari's book, that in the Borgia Apartment
Pinturicchio painted Pope Alexander VI adoring the Virgin represented
under the likeness of his beloved, Julia Farnese. The critic must have
been confused, because none of these madonnas recalls the face of
_Giulia la bella_, whom people used to call the Bride of Christ. The
picture that Vasari refers to must be one in the museum at Valencia."

_THE HALL OF THE SAINTS_

They went into another room, the Hall of the Saints, and Kennedy took
Caesar in front of the fresco called, _The Dispute of Saint Catherine
with the Emperor Maximian.

"The place of this scene," said Kennedy, "Pinturicchio has set in front
of the Arch of Constantine. The artist has added the inscription _Pacis
Cultori_, and below he has embossed the Borgia bull. The subject is the
discussion between the Emperor and the saint. Maximian, seated on a
throne under a canopy, is listening to Saint Catherine, who counts on
her fingers the arguments she has been using in the dispute. Who was it
served as model for the figure of Maximian? At first they imagined it
was Caesar Borgia; but as you may observe, the appearance of the Emperor
is that of a man of twenty odd years, and when Pinturicchio painted
this, Caesar was about seventeen. So it is more logical to suppose that
the model must have been the Pope's eldest son, the Duke of Gandia. A
chronicler of the period says that this Duke of Gandia was good among
the great, as his brother Caesar was great among the wicked. Also,
legend or history, whichever it be, says that Caesar procured his
elder brother's murder in a corner of the Ghetto, and that the Pope on
learning of it, became as if crazy, and went into the full Consistory
with his garments torn and ashes on his head."

"What love for traditional symbolism!" said Caesar.

"Everybody is not so anti-traditional as you. I will go on with my
explanation," added Kennedy. "Saint Catherine has Lucrezia's features.
She is small and slender. She wears her hair down, a little cap with a
pearl cross which hangs on her forehead, and a collar also of pearls.
She has large eyes, a candid expression. Cagnolo da Parma will say of
her, when she goes to Ferrara, that she has '_il naso profilato e bello,
li capelli aurei, gli occhi bianchi, la bocea alquanto grande con li
denti candiaissimi._' Literature will portray this sweet-faced little
blond girl as a Messalina, a poisoner, and incestuous with her brothers
and her father. At this time Lucrezia had just married Giovanni Sforza,
although as a matter of fact the two never lived together. Giovanni
Sforza is the little young man who appears there in the back of the
picture riding a spirited horse. Sforza wears his hair like a woman, and
has a broad-brimmed hat and a red mantle. A little later Caesar Borgia
will try several times to assassinate him."

"What for?" asked Caesar.

"No doubt he found him in the way. The man who is in the foreground,
next to the Emperor's throne, is Andrew Paleologos," Kennedy continued.
"He is the one wearing a pale purple cloak and looking so melancholy. It
used to be supposed that he was Giovanni Borgia. Now they say that it is
Paleologos, whom the death of the Emperor Constantine XIII, about this
time, had caused to lose the crown of Byzance.

"Here at the right, riding a Barbary horse, is Prince Djem, second son
of Muhammad II, whom Alexander VI kept as a hostage. Djem, as you see,
has an expressive face, a prominent nose, lively eyes, a long pointed
beard, a shock of hair, and a big turban. He rides Moorish fashion, with
his stirrups very short, and wears a curved cutlass in his belt. He is a
great friend of Caesar Borgia's, which does not prevent Caesar and his
father, according to public rumour, from poisoning him at a farewell
banquet in Capua. And here is Giovanni Sforza again, on foot. Are those
two children the younger sons of Alexander VI? Or are they Lucrezia and
Caesar again? I don't know. Behind Paleologos are the Pope's domestic
retainers, and among them Pinturicchio himself."

_THE LIFE OF CAESAR BORGIA_

After explaining the picture in detail, Kennedy went into the next room,
followed by Caesar. This is called the Hall of the Liberal Arts, and is
adorned with a large marble mantel.

"Is there no portrait here of Caesar Borgia?" asked Caesar.

"No. Here I have a photograph of the one by Giorgione," said Kennedy,
showing a postal card.

"What sort of man was he? What did he do?"

Kennedy seated himself on a bench near the window and Caesar sat beside
him.

"Caesar Borgia," said Kennedy, "came to Rome from the university of
Pisa, approximately at the time when they made his father Pope. He must
then have been about twenty, and was strong and active. He broke in
horses, was an expert fencer and shot, and killed bulls in the ring."

"That too?"

"He was a good Spaniard. In a court that cannot be seen from here, on
account of those thick panes, but on which these windows look, Caesar
Borgia fought bulls, and the Pope stood here to watch his son's
dexterity with the sword."

"What ruffians!" exclaimed Caesar, smiling.

The Englishman continued with the history of Borgia, his intrigues with
the King of France, the death of Lucrezia's husband, the assassinations
attributed to the Pope's son, the mysterious execution of Ramiro del
Orco, which made Machiavelli say that Caesar Borgia was the prince who
best knew how to make and unmake men, according to their merits; finally
the _coup d'état_ at Sinigaglia with the _condottieri_.

By this time Caesar Moncada was very anxious to know more. These Borgias
interested him. His sympathies went out toward those great bandits who
dominated Rome and tried to get all Italy into their power, leaf by
leaf, like an artichoke. Their purpose struck him as a good one, almost
a moral one. The device, _Aut Caesar, aut nihil_, was worthy of a man of
energy and courage.

Kennedy seeing Caesar's interest, then recounted the scene at Cardinal
Adrian Corneto's country-house; Alexander's intention to give a supper
there to various Cardinals and poison them all with a wine that had
been put into three bottles, so as to inherit from them, the
superstitiousness of the Pope, who sent Cardinal Caraffa to the Vatican
for a golden box in which he kept his consecrated Host, from which he
was never separated; and the mistake of the chamberlain, who served the
poisoned wine to Caesar and his father.

"Here, to this very room, they brought the dying Pope," said Kennedy,
and pointed to a door, on whose marble lintel one may read: _Alexander
Borgia Valentín P. P._ "They say he passed eight days here between life
and death, before he did die, and that when his corpse was exposed, it
decomposed horribly."

Then Kennedy related the story of Caesar's trying to cure himself by the
strange method of being put inside of a mule just dead; his flight from
Rome, sick on a litter, with his soldiers, as far as the Romagna; his
imprisonment in the Castel Sant' Angelo; his capture by the Great
Captain; his efforts to escape from his prison at Medina del Campo; and
his obscure death on the Mendavia road, near Viana in Navarre, through
one of the Count of Lerin's soldiers, named Garcés, a native of Agreda,
who gave Borgia such a blow with a lance that it broke his armour and
passed all the way through his body.

Caesar was stirred up. Hearing the story of the people who had lived
there, in those very rooms, gave him an impression of complete reality.

When they went out again by the Gallery of Inscriptions, they looked
from a window.

"It must have been here that he fought bulls?" said Caesar.

"Yes."

The court was large, with a fountain of four streams in the middle.
"Life then must have been more intense than now," said Caesar.

"Who knows? Perhaps it was the same as now," replied Kennedy.

"And what does history, exact history, say of these Borgias?"

"Of Pope Alexander VI it says that he had his children in wedlock; that
he was a good administrator; that the people were content with him; that
the influence of Spain was justifiable, because he was Spanish; that the
story of the poisonings does not seem certain; and that he himself could
hardly have died of poison, but rather of a malarial fever."

"And about Lucrezia?"

"Of Lucrezia it says that she was a woman like those of her period; that
there are no proofs for belief in her incests and her poisonings; and
that her first marriages, which were never really consummated, were
nothing more than political moves of her father and her brother's."

"And about Caesar?"

"Caesar is the one member of the family who appears really terrible.
His device, _Aut Caesar, aut nihil_, was not a chance phrase, but the
irrevocable decision to be a king or to be nothing."

"That, at least, is not a mystification," murmured Caesar.

_IN FRONT OF THE CASTEL SANT' ANGELO_

They left the Vatican, crossed the Piazza di San Pietro, and drew near
the river.

As they passed in front of the Castel Sant' Angelo, Kennedy said:

"Alexander VI shut himself up in this castle to weep for the Duke of
Gandia. From one of those windows he watched the funeral procession of
his son, whom they were carrying to Santa Maria del Popolo. According to
old Italian custom they bore the corpse in an open casket. The funeral
was at night, and two hundred men with torches lighted the way. When the
cortège set foot on this bridge, the Pope's retinue saw him draw back
with horror, and cover his face, crying out sharply."

XIX

CAESAR'S REFLECTIONS

"I have had the curiosity," Caesar wrote to his friend Alzugaray, "to
inform myself about the life of the Borgias, and going on from one to
another, I reached Saint Francis Borgia; and from Saint Francis I have
gone backwards to Saint Ignatius Loyola.

"The parallelism between the doings of Caesar Borgia and of Iñigo de
Loyola surprised me; what one tried to do in the sphere of action, the
other did in the sphere of thought. These twin Spanish figures, both
odious to the masses, have given its direction to the Church; one,
Loyola, through the impulse to spiritual power; the other, Caesar
Borgia, through the impulse to temporal power.

"One may say that Spain gave Papal Rome its thought and activity, as
it gave the Rome of the Caesars also its thought and activity, through
Seneca and Trajan.

"Really it is curious to see the traces that remain in Rome of
that Basque, Iñigo. That half farceur, half ruffian, who had the
characteristics of a modern anarchist, was a genius for organization.
Bakunin and Mazzini are poor devils beside him. The Church still lives
through Loyola. He was her last reformer.

"The Society of Jesus is the knot of the whole Catholic scaffolding; the
Jesuits know that on the day when this knot, which their Society forms,
is cut or pulled open, the whole frame-work of out-of-date ideas and
lies, which defends the Vatican, will come down with a terrible noise.

"Rome lives on Jesuitism. Indubitably, without Loyola, Catholicism would
have rotted away much sooner. It is obvious that this would have been
better, but we are not talking about that. A good general is not one who
defends just causes, but one who wins battles.

"The Borgias, Luther, and Saint Ignatius, between them, killed the
predominance of the Latin race.

"The Borgias threw discredit on the free Renaissance life, before the
face of all nations; Luther removed the centre of spiritual life and
philosophy to Germany and England; Saint Ignatius prevented Roman
Catholicism from rotting away; he put iron braces on the body that was
doubling over with weakness, and inside his braces the body has gone on
decomposing and has poisoned the Latin countries.

"On hearing this opinion here, they asked me:

"'Then you think Catholicism is dead?'

"'No, no; as to having any civilizing effect, it is dead; but as to
having a sentimental effect, it is very much alive ... and it will still
unfortunately keep on being alive. All this business of the Virgin
del Pilar and the Virgin del Carmen, and saints, and processions, and
magnificent churches, is a terrible strength.... If there were an
emancipated bourgeoisie and a sensible working class, Catholicism would
not be a peril; but there are not, and Catholicism will have, not
perhaps an overpowering expansion, but at least moments of new growth.
While we have a lazy rich class and a brutalized poor class, Catholicism
will be strong.'

"Leaving the utilitarian and moral questions aside, and considering
merely the amount of influence and the traces left by this influence,
one can see that Rome is living on Loyola's work and still dreaming
of Borgia's. Those pilgrims in the Piazza di San Pietro who
enthusiastically yell, _Viva il Papa-re!_ are acclaiming the memory of
Caesar Borgia. Thus you have the absurd result, people who speak with
horror of an historic figure and still hold his work in admiration.

"This Spanish influence that our country gave to the Church in two ways,
spiritual and material,--to the Church which now is an institution not
merely foreign but contrary to our nature,--Spain ought today to try
to use in her own behalf. Spain's work ought to be to organize
extra-religious individualism.

"We are individualists; therefore what we need is an iron discipline,
like soldiers.

"This discipline established, we ought to spread it through the
contiguous countries, especially through Africa. Democracy, the
Republic, Socialism, have not, essentially, any root in our land.
Families, cities, classes, can be united in a pact; isolated men, like
us, can be united only by discipline.

"Moreover, as for us, we do not recognize prestige, nor do we cheerfully
accept either kings or presidents or high priests or grand magi.

"The only thing that would suit us would be to have a chief ... for the
pleasure of eating him alive.

"A Loyola of the extra-religious individualism is what Spain needs.
Deeds, always deeds, and a cold philosophy, realistic, based on deeds,
and a morality based on action. Don't you agree?

"I think, and I am becoming more confirmed in my opinion, that the only
people who can give a direction, found a new civilization with its own
proper characteristics, for that old Iberian race, which probably sprang
from the shores of the Mediterranean ... is we Spaniards.

"'Why only you Spaniards?' my friend Kennedy asked me; and I told him:

"'To me it seems indubitable. France is leaning constantly more towards
the North. In Italy the same is true; Milan and Turin, where the Saxon
and the Gaul predominate, are the real capitals of Italy. In Spain,
however, this does not happen. We are separated from the rest of Europe
by the Pyrenees, and joined to Africa by the sea and climate. Our plan
ought to be to construct a great European Empire, to impose our ideas on
the peninsula, and then to spread them everywhere.'"

XX

DON CALIXTO AT SAINT PETER'S

_DON CALIXTO UNDERSTANDS_

Kennedy was anxious that Caesar should turn into the good road. The good
road, for him, was art.

"At heart," the Englishman informed him, "I am one of those Brothers of
the Esthetic Doctrine who irritate you, and I must instruct you in the
faith."

"I am not opposed to your trying to instruct me."

The two went several times to see museums, especially the Vatican
museum.

One day, on leaving the Sistine Chapel, where they had had a long
discussion on the merits of Michelangelo, Caesar met the painter Cortés,
who came to speak to him.

"I am here with a gentleman from my town, who is a Senator," said
Cortés. "A boresome old boy. Shall I introduce him?"

"All right."

"He is an old fool who knows nothing about anything and talks about
everything."

Cortés presented Caesar to Don Calixto García Guerrero, a man of some
fifty-odd, Senator and boss of the province of Zamora.

Don Calixto invited Caesar and Kennedy to dine with him. The Englishman
expressed regrets, and Caesar said he would go. They took leave of
Cortés and Don Calixto, and went out to the Piazza di San Pietro.

"I imagine you are going to be bored tomorrow dining with that old
countryman of yours," said Kennedy. "Oh, surely. He has all the signs
of a soporific person; but who knows? a type like that sometimes has
influence."

"So you are dining with him with a more or less practical object?"

"Why, of course."

The next evening, Caesar, in his evening clothes, betook himself to an
hotel in the Piazza di Spagna, where Don Calixto García Guerrero was
staying. Don Calixto received him very cordially. He doubtless knew that
Caesar was nephew to Cardinal Fort and brother to a marchioness, and
doubtless that flattered Don Calixto.

Don Calixto honoured Caesar with an excellent dinner, and during dessert
became candid with him. He had come to Rome to put through his obtaining
a Papal title. He was a friend of the Spanish Ambassador to the Vatican,
and it wouldn't have cost him any more to be made a prince, a duke, or
a marquis; but he preferred the title of count. He had a magnificent
estate called La Sauceda, and he wanted to be the Count de la Sauceda.

Caesar comprehended that this gentleman might be fortune coming in the
guise of chance, and he set himself to making good with him, to telling
him stories of aristocratic life in Rome, some of which he had read in
books, and some of which he had heard somewhere or other.

"What vices must exist here!" Don Calixto kept exclaiming. "That is why
they say: _'Roma veduta, fede perduta.'_"

Caesar noted that Don Calixto had a great enthusiasm for the
aristocracy; and so he took pains, every time he talked with him, to mix
the names of a few princes and marquises into the conversation; he also
gave him to understand that he lived among them, and went so far as to
hint the possibility of being of service to him in Rome, but in a
manner ambiguous enough to permit of withdrawing the offer in case of
necessity. Fortunately for Caesar, Don Calixto had his affairs all
completely arranged; the one thing he desired was that Caesar, whom he
supposed to be an expert on archeological questions, should go about
with him the three or four days he expected to remain in Rome. He had
spent a whole week making calls, and as yet had seen nothing.

Caesar had no other recourse but to buy a Baedeker and read it and learn
a lot of things quite devoid of interest for him.

The next day Don Calixto was waiting for him in a carriage at the door,
and they went to see the sights.

Don Calixto was a man that made phrases and ornamented them with many
adverbs ending in -ly.

"Verily," he said, after his first archeological walk in Rome, "verily,
it seems strange that after more than two thousand years have passed,
all these monuments should still remain."

"That is most true," replied Caesar, looking at him with his impassive
air.

"I understand why Rome is the real school for learning, integrally, both
ancient and modern history."

"Most certainly," agreed Caesar.

Don Calixto, who knew neither Italian nor French, found a source of
help, for the days he was to spend in Rome, in Caesar's friendship,
and made him accompany him everywhere. Caesar was able to collect and
preserve, though not precisely cut in brass, the phrases Don Calixto
uttered in front of the principal monuments of Rome.

In front of the Colosseum, his first exclamation was: "What a lot of
stone!" Then recalling his role of orator, he exclaimed: "The spirits
are certainly daunted and the mind darkened on thinking how men could
have sunk to such abysses of evil."

"Don Calixto is referring to those holes," thought Caesar, looking at
the cellars of the Circo Romano.

From the Colosseum the carriage went to the Capitol, and then Don
Calixto asserted with energy:

"One cannot deny that, say what you will, Rome is one of the places most
fertile in memories."

Don Calixto was an easy traveller for his _cicerone_. He far preferred
talking to being given explanations; Caesar had said to him: "Don
Calixto, you understand everything, by intuition." And being thus
reassured, Don Calixto kept uttering terrible absurdities.

One day Don Calixto went to see the Pope, in evening clothes and
with his abdomen covered with decorations, and he asked Caesar if
a photographer couldn't take his picture in the act of leaving the
carriage, so that the photograph would have Saint Peter's as a
background.

"Yes, I think so. Why not? The only thing will be that the photographer
will charge you more."

"I don't mind that. Could you arrange it for me?"

"Yes, man."

What Don Calixto desired was done.

"How did the Pope impress you?" Caesar asked him as he came out

"Very favourably, very favourably indeed."

"He has a stupid face, hasn't he?"

"No, man, not at all. He is like a nice country priest. His predecessor
was no doubt more of a diplomat, more intelligent."

"Yes, the other seemed more of a rogue," said Caesar, laughing at the
precautions Don Calixto took in giving his opinion.

The proofs of the photographs came in the evening, and Don Calixto was
enchanted with them. In one of them you could see the Swiss guard at
the door, with his lance. It was splendid. Don Calixto would not permit
Caesar to go to his hotel, but invited him for dinner; and after dinner
told him he was so indebted that he would be delighted to do anything
Caesar asked him.

"Why don't you make me a Deputy?" said Caesar, laughing.

"Do you want to be one?"

"Yes, man."

"Really?"

"I should think so."

"But you would have to live in Madrid."

"Certainly."

"Would you leave here?"

"Yes, why not?"

"Then, not another word, we will say no more about it. When the time
comes, you will write to me and say: 'Don Calixto, the moment has
arrived for you to remember your promise: I want to be a Deputy.'"

"Very good. I will do it, and you shall present me as candidate for
Castro ... Castro ... what?"

"Castro Duro."

"You will see me there then."

"All right. And now, another favour. There is a Canon from Zamora here,
a friend of mine, who came on the pilgrimage and who desires nothing
so much as to see Saint Peter's and the Catacombs rather thoroughly. I
could explain everything to him, but I am not sure about the dates. Will
you come with us?"

"With great pleasure."

"Then we shall expect you here at ten."

"That will be fine."

Sure enough, at ten Caesar was there. Don Calixto and his friend the
Canon Don Justo, who was a large gentleman, tall and fleshy and with a
long nose, were waiting. The three got into the carriage.

"I hope this priest isn't going to be one of those library rats who
know everything on earth," thought Caesar, but when he heard him make a
couple of mistakes in grammar, he became tranquil.

_THEODORA AND MAROZIA_

As they passed the Castel Sant' Angelo, Caesar began to tell the story
of Theodora and her daughter Marozia, the two women who lived there and
who, for forty odd years, changed the Popes as one changes cooks.

"You know the history of those women?" asked Caesar.

"I don't," said the Canon.

"Nor I," added Don Calixto.

"Then I will tell it to you before we get to Saint Peter's. Theodora, an
influential lady, fell in love with a young priest of Ravenna, and had
him elected Pope, by the name of John X. Her daughter Marozia, a young
girl and a virgin, gave herself to Pope Sergius III, a capricious,
fantastic man, who had once had the witty idea of digging up Pope
Formosus and subjecting him, putrefied as he was, to the judgment of
a Synod. By this eccentric man Marozia had a son, and afterwards was
married three times more. She exercised an omnipotent sway over the Holy
See. John X, her mother's lover, she deposed and sent to die in prison.
With his successor, Leo VI, whom she herself had appointed Pope, she
did the same. The following Pope, Stephen VII, died of illness, twenty
months after his reign began, and then Marozia gave the Papal crown to
the son she had had by Sergius III, who took the name of John XI. This
Pope and his brother Alberic, began to feel their mother's influence
rather heavy, and during a popular revolt they decided to get Marozia
into their power, and they seized her and buried her alive in the _in
pace_ of a convent."

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