The Family by Mario Puzo EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Mario Puzo
- Publish Date: March 29, 2011
- Language: English
- Genre: Organized Crime Thrillers
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Pages: 432
- Price: Free
- ISBN: 0062089153
THE GOLDEN RAYS of the summer sun warmed the cobblestone streets of
Rome as Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia walked briskly from the Vatican to the
three-story stucco house on the Piazza de Merlo where he’d come to claim
three of his young children: his sons Cesare and Juan and his daughter
Lucrezia, flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood. On this fortuitous day the
vice-chancellor to the Pope, the second most powerful man in the Holy
Roman Catholic Church, felt especially blessed.
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At the house of their mother, Vanozza Cattanei, he found himself
whistling happily. As a son of the church he was forbidden to marry, but as
a man of God he felt certain that he knew the Good Lord’s plan. For did not
the Heavenly Father create Eve to complete Adam, even in Paradise? So did
it not follow that on this treacherous earth filled with unhappiness, a man
needed the comfort of a woman even more? He’d had three previous
children when he was a young bishop, but these last children he had sired,
those of Vanozza, held a special place in his heart.
They seemed to ignite in
him the same high passions that she had. And even now, while they were
still so young, he envisioned them standing on his shoulders, forming a
great giant, helping him to unite the Papal States and extend the Holy
Roman Catholic Church far across the world.
Over the years, whenever he had come to visit, the children always
called him “Papa,” seeing no compromise in his devotion to them and his
loyalty to the Holy See. They saw nothing strange about the fact he was a
cardinal and their father too. For didn’t Pope Innocent’s son and daughter
often parade through the streets of Rome for celebrations with great
ceremony?
Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia had been with his mistress, Vanozza, for more
than ten years, and he smiled when he thought how few women had brought
him such excitement and kept his interest for so long. Not that Vanozza had
been the only woman in his life, for he was a man of large appetites in all
worldly pleasures. But she had been by far the most important. She was
intelligent, to his eye beautiful—and someone he could talk to about earthly
and heavenly matters.
She had often given him wise counsel, and in return
he had been a generous lover and a doting father to their children.
Vanozza stood in the doorway of her house and smiled bravely as she
waved good-bye to her three children.
One of her great strengths now that she had reached her fortieth year
was that she understood the man who wore the robes of the cardinal. She
knew he had a burning ambition, a fire that flamed in his belly that would
not be extinguished. He also had a military strategy for the Holy Catholic
Church that would expand its reach, political alliances that would
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