the Porta Portesa.  Alfonso was found at the point of death, but not actually dead, by some passers-by, some of whom recognised him, and instantly conveyed the news of his assassination to the Vatican, while the others, lifting the wounded man in their arms, carried him to his quarters in the Torre Nuova.  The pope and Caesar, who learned this news just as they were sitting down to table, showed great distress, and leaving their companions, at once went to see Alfonso, to be quite certain whether his wounds were fatal or not; and an the next morning, to divert any suspicion that might be turned towards themselves, they arrested Alfonso’s maternal uncle, Francesco Gazella, who had come to Rome in his nephew’s company.  Gazella was found guilty on the evidence of false witnesses, and was consequently beheaded.

But they had only accomplished half of what they wanted.  By some means, fair or foul, suspicion had been sufficiently diverted from the true assassins; but Alfonso was not dead, and, thanks to the strength of his constitution and the skill of his doctors, who had taken the lamentations of the pope and Caesar quite seriously, and thought to please them by curing Alexander’s son-in-law, the wounded man was making progress towards convalescence:  news arrived at the same time that Lucrezia had heard of her husband’s accident, and was starting to come and nurse him herself.  There was no time to lose, and Caesar summoned Michelotto.

“The same night,” says Burcardus, “Don Alfonso, who would not die of his wounds, was found strangled in his bed.”

The funeral took place the next day with a ceremony not unbecoming in itself, though, unsuited to his high rank.  Dan Francesca Bargia, Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St. Peter’s, where the body was buried in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.

Lucrezia arrived the same evening:  she knew her father and brother too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after Alfonso’s death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded.  In fear, therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she felt this time too well might alienate the confidence of her father and brother, she retired to Nepi with her whole household, her whole court, and more than six hundred cavaliers, there to spend the period of her mourning.

This important family business was now settled, and Lucrezia was again a widow, and in consequence ready to be utilized in the pope’s new political machinations.  Caesar only stayed at Rome to receive the ambassadors from France and Venice; but as their arrival was somewhat delayed, and consider able inroads had been made upon the pope’s treasury by the recent festivities, the creation of twelve new cardinals was arranged:  this scheme was to have two effects, viz., to bring 600,000 ducats into the pontifical chest, each hat having been priced at 50,000 ducats, and to assure the pope of a constant majority in the sacred council.