The encounter between Madonna Caterina and Duke Cesare caused extraordinary exhibitions of vigour and agility on both sides. When a desperate unscrupulous woman struggles with a strong and ruthless man, she will do much damage: but, in the end, she must succumb. Directly after the fall of Imola, Duke Cesare received letters from Rome announcing that the Pope’s Holiness narrowly had escaped violent death: for Madonna Caterina, to save herself and her fiefs, believing that Duke Cesare would be compelled to relinquish his expedition if the Pope were dead, had tried to slay the Holy Father by means of venom. To this end, she had sent two Orators charged with proposed conditions of peace; and also she sent a letter (enclosed in a hollow stick, say some) which would cause the Supreme Pontiff to fall dead as soon as He should open it. When the plot was discovered, Tommaso da Forli, a papal chamberlain who had brought the missive, admitted his guilt; (under the Question guilt was commonly admitted); and said that he hoped, by the death of the Pope, to raise the siege of Imola and Forli. This extraordinary story is recorded by several chroniclers, including Monsignor Hans Burchard the Caerimonarius, the dull and stupid defamer of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. The name of the chamberlain gives rise to curious speculations. Tommaso da Forli presumably might be a bastard of the city of Forli of insufficient birth to warrant the adoption of the appellation of his unknown father or mother; and who might very well have taken the name of his native city with the preposition “da” (not “de’,” be it noted) as a surname. Papal chamberlains are nothing more than pontifical flunkeys, and “Thomas from Forli,” being a lackey with access to the Pontifical Person, might have been employed by Madonna Caterina to stab the Pope. That is not unlikely: but the story of the envenomed letter obviously is false; and interesting only as shewing the trend of men’s minds in 1499; and as a proof, perhaps, that if, as has been alleged in the purest ignorance, the envenoming of its foes was a custom of the House of Borgia, at least one other Italian court indulged in the same horrible habit upon occasion.