cabinet which held the medallion,
Alexander VI, motionless and livid, was lying on a bier at whose four
corners there burned four torches. The cardinal stood still for a
moment, his eyes fixed, and his hair standing on end, without strength to
move either backward or forward; then thinking it was all a trick of
fancy or an apparition of the devil's making, he made the sign of the
cross, invoking God's holy name; all instantly vanished, torches, bier,
and corpse, and the seeming mortuary, chamber was once more in darkness.

Then Cardinal Caraffa, who has himself recorded this strange event, and
who was afterwards Pope Paul IV, entered baldly, and though an icy sweat
ran dawn his brow, he went straight to the cabinet, and in the drawer
indicated found the gold chain and the medallion, took them, and hastily
went out to give them to the pope. He found supper served, the guests
arrived, and His Holiness ready to take his place at table; as soon as
the cardinal was in sight, His Holiness, who was very pale, made one step
towards him; Caraffa doubled his pace, and handed the medallion to him;
but as the pope stretched forth his arm to take it, he fell back with a
cry, instantly followed by violent convulsions: an instant later, as he
advanced to render his father assistance, Caesar was similarly seized;
the effect of the poison had been more rapid than usual, for Caesar had
doubled the dose, and there is little doubt that their heated condition
increased its activity.

The two stricken men were carried side by side to the Vatican, where each
was taken to his own rooms: from that moment they never met again.

As soon as he reached his bed, the pope was seized with a violent fever,
which did not give way to emetics or to bleeding; almost immediately it
became necessary to administer the last sacraments of the Church; but his
admirable bodily constitution, which seemed to have defied old age, was
strong enough to fight eight days with death; at last, after a week of
mortal agony, he died, without once uttering the name of Caesar or
Lucrezia, who were the two poles around which had turned all his
affections and all his crimes. His age was seventy-two, and he had
reigned eleven years.

Caesar, perhaps because he had taken less of the fatal beverage, perhaps
because the strength of his youth overcame the strength of the poison, or
maybe, as some say, because when he reached his own rooms he had
swallowed an antidote known on