And, whilst these things were toward, the king learnt from the Bishop of Ceuta that the dispensation already existed, and so, without having received or even seen it the marriage was celebrated, and for revealing this the Bishop of Ceuta was put to death by order of Valentinois." Now, to begin with, Macchiavelli admits that what passed between Pope and duke was secret.

How, then, does he pretend to possess these details of it?
But, leaving that out of the question, his statement--so abundantly repeated by later writers--is traversed by every one of the actual facts of the case.
That there can have been no secret at all about the dispensation is made plain by the fact that Manfredi, the Ferrarese ambassador, writes of it to Duke Ercole on October 2--the day after Cesare's departure from Rome.
And as for the death of Fernando d'Almeida Bishop of Ceuta, this did not take place then, nor until two years later (on January 7, 1499) at the siege of Forli, whither he had gone in Cesare's train--as is related in Bernardi's Chronicles and Bonoli's history of that town.
To return to the matter of Cesare's imminent departure unwed from France, Louis XII was not the only monarch to whom this was a source of anxiety.

Keener far was the anxiety experienced on that score by the King of Naples, who feared that its immediate consequence would be to drive the Holy Father into alliance with Venice, which was paying its court to him at the time and with that end in view.

Eager to conciliate Alexander in this hour of peril, Federigo approached him with alternative proposals, and offered to invest Cesare in the principalities of Salerno and Sanseverino, which had been taken from the rebel barons.

To this the Pope might have consented, but that, in the moment of considering it, letters reached him from Cesare which made him pause.
Louis XII had also discovered an alternative to the marriage of Cesare with Carlotta, and one that should more surely draw the Pope into the alliance with Venice and himself.
Among the ladies of the Court of Queen Anne--Louis had now been wedded a month--there were, besides Carlotta, two other ladies either of whom might make Cesare a suitable duchess.