The same day couriers started far all the courts of Europe.
Caesar Borgia learned the news of his father's election at the University of Pisa, where he was a student.

His ambition had sometimes dreamed of such good fortune, yet his joy was little short of madness.

He was then a young man, about twenty-two or twenty-four years of age, skilful in all bodily exercises, and especially in fencing; he could ride barebacked the most fiery steeds, could cut off the head of a bull at a single sword-stroke; moreover, he was arrogant, jealous, and insincere.
According to Tammasi, he was great among the godless, as his brother Francesco was good among the great.

As to his face, even contemporary authors have left utterly different descriptions; for same have painted him as a monster of ugliness, while others, on the contrary, extol his beauty.

This contradiction is due to the fact that at certain times of the year, and especially in the spring, his face was covered with an eruption which, so long as it lasted, made him an object of horror and disgust, while all the rest of the year he was the sombre, black-haired cavalier with pale skin and tawny beard whom Raphael shows us in the fine portrait he made of him.