Various reasons have been adduced to explain Caesar’s hatred of his sister’s husband. It has even been said that Caesar wished to have him out of the way in order that he himself might enjoy her favours; however, although this charge and others equally hideous, which were made at the time, are no longer believed, they show to what extremes calumny would go in those days and how ready chroniclers and historians, inspired by hate, were to repeat slanders; but they also show the execration and abhorrence in which the Borgias were held. There was a Neapolitan party in Rome, and Alfonso may have been a member of it; his sister Sancia was the wife of Giuffre, Caesar’s brother, and probably the latter’s mistress. Subsequently she and Valentino became bitter enemies, and she was the only person about the Vatican who dared oppose him in anything. All Rome, prelates, citizens, Lucretia, Giuffre, the Pope himself seemed afraid of Caesar. Of the Pope it was said that he both loved and feared him--_ama ed ha paura_. Valentino, hating the House of Naples, and especially Sancia, whose strong nature and unprincipled character clashed with his own, could easily bring himself to compass the death of her brother because it would also leave his sister free for him to marry her into some powerful family which would prove of great assistance to him in his far-reaching projects. Lucretia and Alfonso, whom his contemporaries described as one of the handsomest men in Italy, apparently loved each other. She had been greatly distressed when he fled from Rome, and had begged him to return. On his death Lucretia, who was wholly without will and character, who had none of the traits of the virago, such as Caterina Sforza possessed, retired to Nepi for a time. In speaking of the prompt release of Alfonso’s physicians and servants, “because they were innocent,” Burchard adds the significant remark, “as those sent to arrest them knew perfectly.” The attack on the Duke of Bisceglia evidently was well planned, and he was subsequently strangled within the very walls of the Vatican. The servants and physicians were immediately exonerated. Who, then, was responsible for the murder? All the chroniclers, historians, and ambassadors either openly or by implication charge Caesar with the crime. According to the standards of that perfidious and brutal age, he had ample grounds for the murder--grounds based on both personal hatred and on political ambition. The conquest of Romagna was intimately connected with the aims of the King of France with respect to Naples, and Alfonso was an obstacle in Caesar’s path. The Neapolitan House had refused Valentino one of its daughters for wife, and he had married a French princess; the destruction of the Aragonese family was therefore the logical sequel.