cion that might be turned towards
themselves, they arrested Alfonso's maternal uncle, Francesco Gazella,
who had come to Rome in his nephew's company. Gazella was found guilty
on the evidence of false witnesses, and was consequently beheaded.

But they had only accomplished half of what they wanted. By some means,
fair or foul, suspicion had been sufficiently diverted from the true
assassins; but Alfonso was not dead, and, thanks to the strength of
his constitution and the skill of his doctors, who had taken the
lamentations of the pope and Caesar quite seriously, and thought to
please them by curing Alexander's son-in-law, the wounded man was making
progress towards convalescence: news arrived at the same time that
Lucrezia had heard of her husband's accident, and was starting to come
and nurse him herself. There was no time to lose, and Caesar summoned
Michelotto.

"The same night," says Burcardus, "Don Alfonso, who would not die of his
wounds, was found strangled in his bed."

The funeral took place the next day with a ceremony not unbecoming
in itself, though, unsuited to his high rank. Dan Francesca Bargia,
Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St. Peter's, where the
body was buried in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.

Lucrezia arrived the same evening: she knew her father and brother
too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after
Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the
surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she
knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded. In fear,
therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she felt this time too well
might alienate the confidence of her father and brother, she retired
to Nepi with her whole household, her whole court, and more than six
hundred cavaliers, there to spend the period of her mourning.

This important family business was now settled, and Lucrezia was again
a widow, and in consequence ready to be utilized in the pope's new
political machinations. Caesar only stayed at Rome to receive the
ambassadors from France and Venice; but as their arrival was somewhat
delayed, and consider able inroads had been made upon the pope's
treasury by the recent festivities, the creation of twelve new cardinals
was arranged: this scheme was to have two effects, viz., to bring
600,000 ducats into the pontifical chest, each hat having been priced
at 50,000 ducats, and t