ucretia, now the legally recognized
bride of Alfonso d'Este and about to set out for Ferrara, was an amused
spectator of it?

This is the only passage in Burchard's diary where Lucretia appears in
an unfavorable light; nowhere else has he recorded anything
discreditable to her. The accusations of the Neopolitans and of
Guicciardini are not substantiated by anything in his diary. In fact we
find corroboration nowhere unless we regard Matarazzo as an authority,
which he certainly was not. He states that Giovanni Sforza had
discovered that criminal relations existed between his wife and Caesar
and Don Giovanni, to which a still more terrible suspicion was added.
Sforza, therefore, had murdered Gandia and fled from Rome, and in
consequence Alexander had dissolved his marriage. Setting aside the
monstrous idea that the young woman was guilty at one and the same time
of threefold incest, Matarazzo's account contains an anachronism: Sforza
left Rome two months before the murder of Gandia.

An authentic despatch of the Ferrarese ambassador in Milan, dated June
23, 1497, makes it clear that Lucretia's worthless consort was the one
who started these rumors about her. Certainly no one could have known
Lucretia's character and mode of life better than her husband.
Nevertheless Sforza, before the tribunals of every age, would be
precisely the one whose testimony would receive the least credit.
Consuming with hate and a desire for revenge, this was the reason he
ascribed to the evil-minded Pope for dissolving the marriage. Thus the
suspicion he let drop became a rumor, and the rumor ultimately
crystallized into a belief. In this connection, however, it is worthy of
note that Guido Posthumus, Sforza's faithful retainer, who in epigrams
revenged himself on Alexander for his master's disgrace, neither
mentions this suspicion nor anywhere refers to Lucretia.[97]

In none of the numerous despatches of the day is this suspicion
mentioned, although in a private letter of Malipiero's, dated Rome, June
17, 1497, and in one of Polo Capello's reports, allusion is made to the
"rumor" regarding the criminal relations of Don Giovanni and his
sister.[98] Could the fact that Lucretia never engaged in any love
intrigue--at least she is not charged with having done so--with anyone
else, when there were in Rome so many courtiers, young nobles, and great
cardinals who were her daily companions, have given rise to these
reports? It is a fact that noth