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cesare borgia, prompt #44

Prompt # 44
What will they say about you after you're gone?

That I was just and honest (though the latter might be stretching the truth), strong and decisive, charming, sensual, learnèd; a good friend in peace and a valuable ally in war. I don't believe that's too much to ask. As to what they were really saying... I can tell you that, quite precisely. Geronimo Casio of Bologna wrote, in an attempt to make me a suitable example of the frailty of life and the vicissitudes of fortune,

Cesare Borgia, che era della gente,
Per armi et per virtù tenuto un sole;
Mancar dovendo, andò dove andar sole
Phebo, verso la sera, a l'occidente.

That's a good one, isn't it? Funny I'm not laughing. Because it takes some nerve to equal a shithole in Navarra with a good place for the Sun to die. I like the part about being taken for a Sun though, I'll readily admit. But good Messer Casio's words were all too soon forgotten. What I got instead what yet another shithole ditch, this time in Calle de la Rua, and a little slab: "Here, in a scant piece of earth, lies he whom all the world feared."

And then, for a long, long time, the voices were silent.