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 11th 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 11th (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.

Those entries in the diary of the Master of Ceremonies constitute an
incontrovertible document, an irrefutable testimony against the charges
of poisoning when taken in conjunction with the evidence of fact
afforded by the length of the illness.

It is true that, under date of November 20, 1504 (under the pontificate
of Julius II), there is the following entry:

"Sentence was pronounced in the 'Ruota' against Sebastiano Pinzone,
apostolic scribe, contumaciously absent, and he was deprived of all
benefices and offices in that he had caused the death of the Cardinal of
Modena, his patron, who had raised him from the dust."

But not even that can shake the conviction that must leap to every
honest mind from following the entries in the diary contemporary with
the cardinal's decease. They are too circumstantial and conclusive to
be overthrown by this recorded sentence of the Ruota two years later
against a man who was not even present to defend himself. Besides, it is
necessary to discriminate. Burchard is not stating