eing the true circumstances of the death of Alexander VI.

It is a noteworthy matter that in all that concerns the history of the
House of Borgia, and more particularly those incidents in it that are
wrapped in mystery, circumstantial elucidation has a habit of proceeding
from the same quarters.

You will remember, for instance, that the Venetian Paolo Capello (though
not in Rome at the time) was one of those who was best informed in the
matter of the murder of the Duke of Gandia. And it was Capello again who
was possessed of the complete details of the scarcely less mysterious
business of Alfonso of Aragon. Another who on the subject of the murder
of Gandia "had no doubts"--as he himself expressed it--was Pietro
Martire d'Anghiera, in Spain at the time, whence he wrote to inform
Italy of the true circumstances of a case that had happened in Italy.

It is again Pietro Martire d'Anghiera who, on November 10, 1503, writes
from Burgos in Spain to inform Rome of the true facts of Alexander's
death--for it is in that letter of his that the tale of the flask of
wine, as here set down, finds place for the first time.

It is unprofitable to pursue the matter further, since at this time
of day even the most reluctant to reject anything that tells against
a Borgia have been compelled to admit that the burden of evidence is
altogether too overwhelming in this instance, and that it is proved to
the hilt that Alexander died of the tertian fever then ravaging Rome.

And just as the Pope's death was the subject of the wildest fictions
which have survived until very recent days, so too, was Cesare's
recovery.

Again, it was the same Pietro Martire d'Anghiera who from Burgos wrote
to inform Rome of what was taking place in the privacy of the Duke of
Valentinois's apartments in the Vatican. Under his facile and magic pen,
the jar of ice-cold water into which Cesare was believed to have been
plunged was transmuted into a mule which was ripped open that the
fever-stricken Cesare might be packed into the pulsating entrails, there
to sweat the fever out of him.

But so poor and sexless a beast as this seeming in the popular mind
inadequate to a man of Cesare's mettle, it presently improved upon and
converted it into a bull--so much more appropriate, too, as being the
emblem of his house.

Nor does it seem that even then the story has gone far enough. Facilis
inventis addere. There comes a French writer with an essay on the
Borgias,