veyed some poisoned wine. By mistake, or by the
contrivance of the Cardinal, who may have bribed this trusted agent,
they drank the death-cup mingled for their victim. Nearly all
contemporary Italian annalists, including Guicciardini, Paolo Giovio,
and Sanudo, gave currency to this version of the tragedy, which became
the common property of historians, novelists, and moralists.[1] Yet
Burchard who was on the spot, recorded in his diary that both father and
son were attacked by a malignant fever; and Giustiniani wrote to his
masters in Venice that the Pope's physician ascribed his illness to
apoplexy.[2] The season was remarkably unhealthy, and deaths from fever
had been frequent. A circular letter to the German Princes, written
probably by the Cardinal of Gurk, and dated August 31, 1503, distinctly
mentioned fever as the cause of the Pope's sudden decease, _ex hoc
seculo horrenda febrium incensione absorptum_.[3] Machiavelli, again,
who conversed with Cesare Borgia about this turning-point in his career,
gave no hint of poison, but spoke only of son and father being
simultaneously prostrated by disease.

[1] The story is related by Cinthio in his _Ecatommithi_,
December 9, November 10.

[2] The various accounts of Alexander's death have been
epitomized by Gregorovius (_Stadt Rom_, vol. vii.), and have
been discussed by Villari in his edition of the Giustiniani
Dispatches, 2 vols. Florence, Le Monnier. Gregorovius thinks
the question still open. Villari decides in favor of fever
against poison.

[3] Reprinted by R. Garnett in _Athenaeum_, Jan. 16, 1875.

At this distance of time, and without further details of evidence, we
are unable to decide whether Alexander's death was natural, or whether
the singularly circumstantial and commonly accepted story of the
poisoned wine contained the truth. On the one side, in favor of the
hypothesis of fever, we have Burchard's testimony, which does not,
however, exactly agree with Giustiniani's, who reported apoplexy to the
Venetian senate as the cause of death, and whose report, even at Venice,
was rejected by Sanudo for the hypothesis of poison. On the other side,
we have the consent of all contemporary historians, with the single and,
it must be allowed, remarkable exception of Machiavelli. Paolo Giovio
goes even so far as to assert that the Cardinal Corneto told him he had
narrowly escaped from the effects of antidotes taken in his extreme
t