Now if Asquino defamed the memory of Cardinal Michieli it seems to follow naturally that he had hated the cardinal; and, if we know that he hated him, we need not marvel that, out of that hatred, he poisoned him. But something must have been suspected as a motive for his arrest in addition to the slanders he was uttering, otherwise how came the questions put to him to be directed so as to wring from him the confession that he had poisoned the cardinal ? If you choose to believe his further statement that he was constrained to it by Pope Alexander and the Duke of Valentinois, you are, of course, at liberty to do so. But you will do well first to determine precisely what degree of credit such a man might be worth when seeking to extenuate a fault admitted under pressure of the torture and offering the extenuation likeliest to gain him the favour of the della Rovere Pope, whose life's task as we shall see was the defamation of the hated Borgias. You will also do well closely to examine the last part of his confession that he was constrained to it " against his will and without reward." Would the deed have been so very much against the will of one who went about publishing his hatred of the dead cardinal by the slanders he emitted ?

1 Burchard's Diarium, March 6, 1504.

Upon such evidence as that the accusation of the Pope's murder of Cardinal Michieli has been definitely established and it must be admitted that it is, if anything, rather more evidence than is usually forthcoming of the vampirism and atrocities alleged against him.

Giustiniani, writing to his Government in the spring of 1503, informs the Council of Ten that it is the Pope's way to fatten his cardinals before disposing of them that is to say, enriching them before poisoning them, that he may inherit their possessions. It was a wild and sweeping statement, dictated by political animus, and it has since grown to proportions more monstrous than the original. You may read usque ad nauseam of the Pope and Cesare's constant practice of poisoning cardinals who had grown rich, for the purpose of seizing their possessions, and you are very naturally filled with horror at so much and such abominable turpitude. In this matter, assertion coupled with whorling periods of vituperation have ever been considered by the accusers all that was necessary to establish the accusations. It has never, for instance, been considered necessary to cite the names of the cardinals composing that regiment of victims. That, of course, would be to challenge easy refutation of the wholesale charge ; and refutation is not desired by those who prefer the sensational manner.

The omission may, in part at least, be repaired by giving a list of the cardinals who died during the eleven years of the pontificate of Alexander VI. Those deaths, in eleven years, number twenty one representing, incidentally, a percentage that compares favourably with any other eleven years of any other pontificate or pontificates. They are :

Now, search as you will, not only such contemporary records as diaries, chronicles, and dispatches from ambassadors in Rome during that period of eleven years but also subsequent writings compiled from them, and you shall find no breath of scandal attaching to the death of seventeen of those cardinals, no suggestion that they died other than natural deaths.

Four remain : Cardinals Giovanni Borgia (Giuni ore), Gianbattista Ferrari (Cardinal of Modena), Gianbattista Orsini, and Giovanni Michieli, all of whom the Pope and Cesare have, more or less persistently, been accused of poisoning.

Giovanni Borgia's death at Fossombrone has been dealt with at length in its proper place, and it has been shown how utterly malicious and groundless was the accusation.

Giovanni Michieli's is the case that has just been reviewed, and touching which you may form your own conclusions.

Gianbattista Orsini's also has been examined. It rests upon rumour ; but even if that rumour be true, it is unfair to consider the deed in any but the light of a political execution.

There remains the case of the Cardinal of Modena, a man who had amassed enormous wealth in the most questionable manner, and who was universally execrated. The epigrams upon his death, in the form of epitaphs, dealt most terribly with " his ignominious memory" as Burchard has it. Of these the Master of Ceremonies collected upwards of a score, which he gives in his Diarium. Let one suffice here as a fair example of the rest, the one that has it that the earth has the cardinal's body, the bull (i.e. the Borgia) his wealth, and hell his soul.

" Hac Janus Baptista jacet Ferrarius urna, Terra habuit corpus, Bos bona, Styx animam."

The only absolutely contemporary suggestion of his having been poisoned emanated from the pen of that same Giustiniani. He wrote to the Venetian Senate to announce the cardinal's death on July 20. In his letter he relates how his benefices were immediately distributed, and how the lion's share fell to the cardinal's secretary, Sebastiano Pinzone, and that it was said (" e fama ") that this man had received them as the price of blood (" in premium sanguinis "), " since it is held, from many evident signs, that the cardinal died from poison" ("ex veneno").

Already on the nth he had written : " The Cardinal of Modena lies ill, with little hope of recovery. Poison is suspected" ("si dubita di veleno").

That was penned on the eighth day of the cardinal's sickness, for he was taken ill on the 3rd as Burchard shows. Burchard, further, lays before us the whole course of the illness; tells us how, from the beginning, the cardinal refused to be bled or to take medicine of any kind, tells us explicitly and positively that the cardinal was suffering from a certain fever so prevalent and deadly in Rome during the months of July and August; he informs us that, on the nth (the day on which Giustiniani wrote the above cited dispatch), the fever abated, to return on the 16th. He was attended (Burchard continues) by many able physicians, who strove to induce him to take their medicines; but he refused persistently until the following day, when he accepted a small proportion of the doses proposed. On July 20 -after an illness of seventeen days he finally expired.