Netta’s Reviews > The Subtlest Soul > Status Update

It is possible that he was poisoned, for no pope is without enemies, and Pope Pius had a desperate and bold one in Pandolfo Petrucci. But I prefer to think that God, having selected him as his vicar, then took pity on him and gathered him to heaven before he had a chance to imperil his soul through long exercise of the office of pope.

The coup was a bold one, and worthy of the duke, who had clearly not lost his wits with his sickness. By the time Christendom became aware it was fatherless, its coffers had already been picked dry.

Messer Leonardo was in Florence at this time, as I had learned at Cardinal Giovanni’s, having been lured into an artistic duel with the young master Michelangelo, whose talents as a painter were apparently as remarkable as his skills as a forger of antiquities.

”The butcher of Fermo wants a title,” he [Valentino] said, addressing Don Michelotto, who was seated by the fire, cracking walnuts into a silver basin and observing us. “Do you think marquis would do?” “Not a chance. A man of his stature. Duke at the very least.”

This was a great weakness of the conspirators, that they were bandits at heart. They considered themselves strategists and generals, but they were as easily distracted as magpies if they caught a glint of silver to the left or the right.

I was to help oversee the inventorying and packing of the great library of the dukes of Urbino. This was an extraordinary collection, one of the finest in Europe, famed especially for its remarkable manuscripts. Duke Federico, who assembled it, had no time for printed books, thinking it beneath the dignity of a ruler to sully his eyes with volumes a commoner might have on his shelf.

It may sound from what I have been saying that Messer Niccolò disdained the duke, but this was not true. He had much admiration for him. He saw in him a vastness of ambition and a relentlessness that carried a whiff of the ancient heroes of Rome. I remember he spoke much of the speed of Valentino’s march on Urbino, which was like that of some great carnivore.

This was Liverotto’s vindication, as he saw it. If he had not had the foresight to expunge every last drop of della Rovere blood from the city of Fermo through his killings, we would have risked suffering the fate of Urbino and becoming prey to a foreign tyrant. Instead, through his prudence, we had the patriotic consolation of being tyrannized over by a man of our own soil.

You can read of tyrannies in history and know in your mind that these things happen, but nothing can prepare you for the shock of finding yourself amid these atrocities. It is like the difference (I imagine) between reading the Inferno of Dante and feeling those dark gates close behind you yourself.

Messer Leonardo’s drawing was a thing of great beauty. I can see it very well in my memory: my young, shadowy, dreamy-eyed face. I do not have it now. I sold it to a connoisseur in Rome a few years after the time of this history.