o hurry
back at once to the Vatican, and told him in which part of his room he
had left it, so that he might get it and bring it him without delay.
Then, as the walk had made him thirsty, he turned to a valet, giving
signs with his hand as he did so that his messenger should make haste,
and asked for something to drink. Caesar, who was also thirsty, ordered
the man to bring two glasses. By a curious coincidence, the butler had
just gone back to the Vatican to fetch some magnificent peaches that had
been sent that very day to the pope, but which had been forgotten when
he came here; so the valet went to the under butler, saying that His
Holiness and Monsignors the Duke of Romagna were thirsty and asking for
a drink. The under butler, seeing two bottles of wine set apart, and
having heard that this wine was reserved for the pope, took one, and
telling the valet to bring two glasses on a tray, poured out this wine,
which both drank, little thinking that it was what they had themselves
prepared to poison their guests.

Meanwhile Caraffa hurried to the Vatican, and, as he knew the palace
well, went up to the pope's bedroom, a light in his hand and attended
by no servant. As he turned round a corridor a puff of wind blew out his
lamp; still, as he knew the way, he went on, thinking there was no need
of seeing to find the object he was in search of; but as he entered
the room he recoiled a step, with a cry of terror: he beheld a ghastly
apparition; it seemed that there before his eyes, in the middle of
the room, between the door and the 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 Ho