The whole night was spent in this manner; let your lordship decide whether well or ill." Is not that sufficient to stop the foul mouth of inventive slander?
What need to suggest happenings unspeakable?
Yet it is the fashion to quote the last sentence above from Boccaccio's letter in the original--"totam noctem comsumpsimus; judicet modo Ex( ma.) Dominatio vestra si bene o male"-- as though decency forbade its translation; and at once this poisonous reticence does its work, and the imagination--and not only that of the unlettered--is fired, and all manner of abominations are speculatively conceived.
Infessura, being absent, says that the comedies performed were licentious ("lascive").

But what comedies of that age were not?
It was an age which had not yet invented modesty, as we understand it.

That Boccaccio, who was present, saw nothing unusual in the comedy--there was only one, according to him--is proved by his description of it as "worthy" ("una degna commedia.") M.Yriarte on this same subject( 1) is not only petty, but grotesque.
He chooses to relate the incident from the point of view of Infessura, whom, by the way, he translates with an amazing freedom,( 2) and he makes bold to add regarding Gianandrea Boccaccio that: "It must also be said that the ambassador of Ferrara, either because he did not see everything, or because he was less austere than Infessura, was not shocked by the comedies, etc." ("soit qu'il n'ait pas tout vu, soit qu'il ait ete moins austere qu'Infessura, n'est pas choque....") 1 La Vie de Cesar Borgia.
2 Thus in the matter of the fifty silver cups tossed by the Pope into the ladies' laps, "sinum" is the word employed by Infessura--a word which has too loosely been given its general translation of "bosom," ignoring that it equally means "lap" and that "lap" it obviously means in this instance.

M.Yriarte, however, goes a step further, and prefers to translate it as "corsage," which at once, and unpleasantly, falsifies the picture; and he adds matter to dot the I's to an extent certainly not warranted even by Infessura.
M.Yriarte, you observe, does not scruple to opine that Boccaccio, who was present, did not see everything; but he has no doubt that Infessura, who was not present, and who wrote from "hearsay," missed nothing.
Alas! Too much of the history of the Borgias has been written in this spirit, and the discrimination in the selection of authorities has ever been with a view to obtaining the more sensational rather than the more truthful narrative.
Although it is known that Cesare came to Rome in the early part of 1493--for his presence there is reported by Gianandrea Boccaccio in March of that year--there is no mention of him at this time in connection with his sister's wedding.

Apparently, then, he was not present, although it is impossible to suggest where he might have been at the time.
Boccaccio draws a picture of him in that letter, which is worthy of attention, "On the day before yesterday I found Cesare at home in Trastevere.