Of course it persisted; such a charge could not do otherwise.
But now that we see in what soil it had its roots we shall know what importance to attach to it.
Not only did it persist, but it developed, as was but natural.

Cesare and the dead Gandia were included in it, and presently it suggested a motive--not dreamed of until then--why Cesare might have been his brother's murderer.
Then, early in 1498, came the rumour that Cesare was intending to abandon the purple, and later Writers, from Capello down to our own times, have chosen to see in Cesare's supposed contemplation of that step a motive so strong for the crime as to prove it in the most absolutely conclusive manner.

In no case could it be such proof, even if it were admitted as a motive.

But is it really so to be admitted?
Did such a motive exist at all?
Does it really follow--as has been taken for granted--that Cesare must have remained an ecclesiastic had Gandia lived?
We cannot see that it does.

Indeed, such evidence as there is, when properly considered, points in the opposite direction, even if no account is taken of the fact that this was not the first occasion on which it was proposed that Cesare should abandon the ecclesiastical career, as is shown by the Ferrarese ambassador's dispatches of March 1493.
It is contended that Gandia was a stumbling-block to Cesare, and that Gandia held the secular possessions which Cesare coveted; but if that were really the case why, when eventually (some fourteen months after Gandia's death) Cesare doffed the purple to replace it by a soldier's harness, did he not assume the secular possessions that had been his brother's?
His dead brother's lands and titles went to his dead brother's son, whilst Cesare's career was totally different, as his aims were totally different, from any that had been Gandia's, or that might have been Gandia's had the latter lived.