n has been discovered. Of these it is necessary that I should
make a full confession.

My deliberate failure is "The Night of Nuptials." I discovered an
allusion to the case of Charles the Bold and Sapphira Danvelt in
Macaulay's "History of England"--quoted from an old number of the
"Spectator"--whilst I was working upon the case of Lady Alice Lisle.
There a similar episode is mentioned as being related of Colonel Kirke,
but discredited because known for a story that has a trick of springing
up to attach itself to unscrupulous captains. I set out to track it to
its source, and having found its first appearance to be in connection
with Charles the Bold's German captain Rhynsault, I attempted to
reconstruct the event as it might have happened, setting it at least in
surroundings of solid fact.

My most flagrant speculation occurs in "The Night of Hate." But in
defence of it I can honestly say that it is at least no more flagrant
than the speculations on this subject that have become enshrined in
history as facts. In other words, I claim for my reconstruction of the
circumstances attending the mysterious death of Giovanni Borgia, Duke of
Gandia, that it no more lacks historical authority than do any other
of the explanatory narratives adopted by history to assign the guilt to
Gandia's brother, Cesare Borgia.

In the "Cambridge Modern History" our most authoritative writers on this
epoch have definitely pronounced that there is no evidence acceptable
to historians to support the view current for four centuries that Cesare
Borgia was the murderer.

Elsewhere I have dealt with this at length. Here let it suffice to say
that it was not until nine months after the deed that the name of Cesare
Borgia was first associated with it; that public opinion had in the mean
time assigned the guilt to a half-dozen others in succession; that no
motive for the crime is discoverable in the case of Cesare; that the
motives advanced will not bear examination, and that they bear on the
face of them the stamp of having been put forward hastily to support
an accusation unscrupulously political in purpose; that the first men
accused by the popular voice were the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor Ascanio
Sforza and his nephew Giovanni Sforza, Tyrant of Pesaro; and, finally,
that in Matarazzo's "Chronicles of Perugia" there is a fairly detailed
account of how the murder was perpetrated by the latter.

Matarazzo, I confess, is worthy of no more credit th