If the murder was the work of some enemy, what would be more natural than for the assassin to endeavour to turn suspicion from himself and at the same time heap infamy upon the Borgias by launching the rumour that the Cardinal of Valencia was the author of the crime? It is clear that Gandia voluntarily went into the quarter of the city dominated by the most determined enemies of the Borgia--the Orsini. His personal attendant was found in the morning murdered, in the Piazza degli Ebrei, where the Duke had left him. Evidently the man in the mask had led Gandia into a trap, and then, after he had been dispatched, had provided for the taking off of this henchman. When Gandia left the servant he evidently thought he might not return that evening. But how could the man in the mask have visited Gandia every day for a month for the purpose of entrapping him, without the Duke discovering it was a plot? Clearly Gandia had no suspicions whatever. The whole affair is so mysterious that we are inclined to ask whether Burchard’s statement of the circumstances is correct. It is against all reason to suppose that Gandia would have ventured at night unattended into the quarter of the Orsini with a strange man behind him on his mule, unless he was going to keep an assignation, and his remark to Caesar shows that such was his purpose. If this assignation was only a plot to get him away from his own people, who contrived it? Did Caesar? For Caesar to have arranged it right in the stronghold of their bitterest enemies, a mass of details, a planning, and a coincidence of events wellnigh impossible would have been necessary. It is much more logical to suppose that those enemies themselves planned it--especially as Gandia had been brought from Spain expressly to crush the Orsini. Again--we may ask--was the Duke playing false with his own people? He had seen little of them, he scarcely knew them. Did he perhaps fancy that he might rise more rapidly by casting his fortunes with the enemies of the Pope than by supporting him? Was the mysterious man in the mask the agent of some family or faction trying to win over the Duke? Gandia accompanied this man apparently without even a suggestion of fear into the enemy’s quarter. If he was concerned in some conspiracy against his family and the Vatican, some obstacle in the negotiations may have made his death and that of the bully left in the square necessary to prevent exposure, even if it had not at first been intended to murder the Duke. If he was plotting against the Vatican, who were his fellow-conspirators in the Orsini quarter? The affair seems to contain more than a mere assignation, for if not why was it necessary to dispatch the servant? It was not long before accusations came from without, started perhaps by persons who at a distance felt secure from the wrath of the Borgia.