honest work founded upon the study of historical evidences. With that
piece of charlatanism he deceived the great mass of the unlettered of
France and of all Europe into believing that in his tragedy he presented
the true Lucrezia Borgia.

"If you do not believe me," he declared, "read Tommaso Tommasi, read the
Diary of Burchard."

Read, then, that Diary, extending over a period of twenty-three years,
from 1483 to 1506, of the Master of Ceremonies of the Vatican (which
largely contributes the groundwork of the present history), and the one
conclusion to which you will be forced is that Victor Hugo himself had
never read it, else he would have hesitated to bid you refer to a work
which does not support a single line that he has written.

As for Tommaso Tommasi--oh, the danger of a little learning! Into what
quagmires does it not lead those who flaunt it to impress you!

Tommasi's place among historians is on precisely the same plane as
Alexandre Dumas's. His Vita di Cesare Borgia is on the same historical
level as Les Borgias, much of which it supplied. Like Crimes Célèbres,
Tommasi's book is invested with a certain air of being a narrative of
sober fact; but like Crimes Célèbres, it is none the less a work of
fiction.

This Tommaso Tommasi, whose real name was Gregorio Leti--and it is under
this that such works of his as are reprinted are published nowadays--was
a most prolific author of the seventeenth century, who, having turned
Calvinist, vented in his writings a mordacious hatred of the Papacy and
of the religion from which he had seceded. His Life of Cesare Borgia was