One of the Pope's nephews, Antonio Bassi, is lying grievously ill on his death-bed. His cousin Girolamo visits him the day before his death, and tries to comfort him "with fraternal words," and assurances that he will soon get well. But the dying man, either from the peevishness of suffering, says the chronicler,[81] or because he knew that he could now speak out with impunity what he had long felt, abused his powerful cousin in the most violent manner, "mentioning certain deeds of the Count universally condemned, and certain conduct of his reprobated by all men; on account of which, he said, the judgment of God, from which no human power could avail to protect him, would shortly fall on him. And in speaking of these things, he used a degree of vehemence which none of those who knew him best had ever heard him speak with when in health." The Count, it seems, took it very quietly; but "we all standing round the bed blushed for shame at the scene, and several of us slunk away out of hearing." It would have been satisfactory to have been told what these so universally reprobated deeds and conduct were. Perhaps nephew Bassi would have liked some of the good things that were heaped on nephew Riario. There _was_, indeed, one dark topic, of which we shall have to speak presently, the indiscreet handling of which might well make discreet courtiers slink out of hearing, lest their ears should become the unwilling depositories of truths so carefully concealed that history, after nearly four hundred years of investigation, has failed in obtaining satisfactory evidence of them. Could it have been that the dying man felt himself so safe from earthly vengeance, and so beyond all considerations of worldly prudence, as to have dared to speak aloud in such a tone of the black Pazzi tragedy? If so, we know how dangerous it might have been to hear him. If so, could Girolamo Riario have been so unmoved by his upbraiding? Be it as it may, the above few hints, so fortuitously, as it seems, floating on the surface of the vast, black, all-devouring pool of oblivion, are all that we have to speculate on in the matter. Antonio Bassi died, and no "judgment" followed—yet awhile.