years, while the Duke and Lucrezia enjoyed themselves in its spacious halls and su ny loggie among their courtiers.  Ferdinand died in prison, aged sixty-three, in 1540.  Giulio was released in 1559 and died, aged eighty-three, in 1561.  These facts deserve to be recorded in connection with Lucrezia’s married life at Ferrara, lest we should pay too much attention to the flatteries of Ariosto.  At the same time her history as Duchess consists, for the most part, in the record of the birth of children.  Like her mother Vannozza, she gave herself, in the decline of life, to works of charity and mercy.  After this fashion the bright and baleful dames of the Renaissance saved their souls.

But to return to the domestic history of Alexander.  The murder of the Duke of Gandia brings the whole Borgia family upon the scene.  It is related with great circumstantiality and with surprising sangfroid by Burchard, the Pope’s Master of the Ceremonies.  The Duke with his brother Cesare, then Cardinal Valentino, supped one night at the house of their mother Vannozza.  On their way home the Duke said that he should visit a lady of their acquaintance.  He parted from Cesare and was never seen again alive.  When the news of his disappearance spread abroad, a boatman of the Tiber deposed to having watched the body of a man thrown into the river on the night of the Duke’s death, the 14th of June; he had not thought it worth while to report this fact, for he had seen ’a hundred bodies in his day thrown into the water at the said spot, and no questions asked about them afterwards.’  The Pope had the Tiber dragged for some hours, while the wits of Rome made epigrams upon this true successor of S. Peter, this new fisher of men.  At last the body of the Duke of Gandia was hauled up:  nine wounds, one in the throat, the others in the head and legs and trunk, were found upon the corpse.  From the evidence accumulated on the subject of the murder it appeared that Cesare had planned it; whether, as some have supposed, out of a jealousy of his brother too dreadful to describe, or, as is more probable, because he wished to take the first place in the Borgia family, we do not know exactly.  The Pontiff in his rage and grief was like a wild beast driven to bay.  He shut himself up in a private room, refused food, and howled with so terrible a voice that it was heard in the streets beyond his palace.  When he rose up from this agony, remorse seemed to have struck him.  He assembled a Conclave of the Cardinals, wept before them, rent his robes, confessed his sins, and instituted a commission for the reform of the abuses he had sanctioned in the Church.  But the storm of anguish spent its strength at last.  A visit from Vannozza, the mother of his children, wrought a sudden change from fury to reconcilement.  What passed between them is not known for certain; Vannozza is supposed, however, to have pointed out, what was indisputably true, that Cesare was more fitted to support the dignity of the family by his abilities than had been the weak and amiable Duke of Gandia.  The miserable father rose from the earth, dried his eyes, took food, put from him his remorse, and forgot together with his grief for Absalom the reforms which he had promised for the Church.