They lived habitually in an atmosphere of peril which taxed all their energies.
Their activity was extreme, and their passions corresponded to their vehement vitality.

About such men there could be nothing on a small or mediocre scale.

When a weakling was born in a despotic family, his brothers murdered him, or he was deposed by a watchful rival.

Thus only gladiators of tried capacity and iron nerve, superior to religious and moral scruples, dead to national affection, perfected in perfidy, scientific in the use of cruelty and terror, employing first-rate faculties of brain and will and bodily powers in the service of transcendent egotism, only the _virtuosi_ of political craft as theorized by Machiavelli, could survive and hold their own upon this perilous arena.
[1] Brantome _Capitaines Etrangers_, Discours 48, gives an account of the entrance of the Borgia into Chinon in 1498, and adds: 'The king being at the window saw him arrive, and there can be no doubt how he and his courtiers ridiculed all this state, as unbecoming the petty Duke of Valentinois.' The life of the despot was usually one of prolonged terror.

Immured in strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops, protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and drink lest they should be poisoned.