Explore "The Life of Cesare Borgia" by Rafael Sabatini on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The fever that racked Cesare Borgia's body in those days can have been as nothing to the fever that racked his mind, the despairing rage that must have whelmed his soul to see the unexpected--the one contingency against which he had not provided--cutting the very ground from underneath his feet.
As he afterwards expressed himself to Macchiavelli, and as Macchiavelli has left on record, Cesare had thought of everything, had provided for everything that might happen on his father's death, save that in such a season--when more than ever he should have need for all his strength of body and of mind--he should, himself, be lying at the point of death.