Later writers take up the tale of it. It is a fine subject about which to make phrases, and the passion for phrase-making will at times outweigh the respect for truth. Thus Villari with his “the worst Pontiff that ever filled St. Peter’s Chair,” and again, elsewhere, echoing what many a writer has said before him from Guicciardini downwards, in utter and diametric opposition to the true facts of the case: “The announcement of his election was received throughout Italy with universal dismay.” To this he adds the ubiquitous story of King Ferrante’s bursting into tears at the news--“though never before known to weep for the death of his own children.”
Let us pause a moment to contemplate the grief the Neapolitan King. What picture is evoked in your minds by that statement of his bursting into tears at Alexander’s election? We see--do we not?--a pious, noble soul, horror-stricken at the sight of the Papacy’s corruption; a truly sublime figure, whose tears will surely stand to his credit in heaven; a great heart breaking; a venerable head bowed down with lofty, righteous grief, weeping over the grave of Christian hopes. Such surely is the image we are meant to see by Guicciardini and his many hollow echoers.
Turn we now for corroboration of that noble picture to the history of this same Ferrante. A shock awaits us. We find, in this bastard of the great and brilliant Alfonso a cruel, greedy, covetous monster, so treacherous and so fiendishly brutal that we are compelled to extend him the charity of supposing him to be something less than sane. Let us consider but one of his characteristics. He loved to have his enemies under his own supervision, and he kept them so--the living ones caged and guarded, the dead ones embalmed and habited as in life; and this collection of mummies was his pride and delight. More, and worse could we tell you of him. But--ex pede, Herculem.
This man shed tears we are told. Not another word. It is left to our imagination to paint for us a picture of this weeping; it is left to us to conclude that these precious tears were symbolical of the grief of Italy herself; that the catastrophe that provoked them must have been terrible indeed.
But now that we know what manner of man was this who wept, see how different is the inference that we may draw from his sorrow. Can we still imagine it--as we are desired to do--to have sprung from a lofty, Christian piety? Let us track those tears to their very source, and we shall find it to be compounded of rage and fear.