(β) the Lord Amaneus (Amanateus) d’Albret, of Navarre; Cardinal-Deacon of San Niccolo _in Carcere Tulliano_: (γ) the Lord Don Pedro Luis de Borja, a Pontifical Nephew, brother of the Cardinal of Monreale (Giovanni Seniore); succeeded his deceased cousin Cardinal Giovanni Giuniore as Cardinal-Deacon of Santa Maria in _Via Lata_. * * * * * The Christian King Louis XII, now calling himself the “Second Caesar,” was not idle during this year 1500. Duke Ludovico Maria Sforza-Visconti certainly recovered his duchy of Milan; but, after the Triumph given to Duke Cesare de Valentinois in Rome on his return from the Romagna with Madonna Caterina Sforza-Riario as his prisoner-of-war, the prestige of the Papacy was so increased that the French took heart and gained a notable victory at Novara, capturing Duke Ludovico Maria and his brother the Vicechancellor, who then were incarcerated safely in France. * * * * * In July, Don Alonso de Aragona, Prince of Bisceglia, Quadrata, and Salerno, and husband of Madonna Lucrezia Borgia was murdered; and the opinion carefully and carelessly has been cultivated that this was one of the crimes of Duke Cesare de Valentinois and the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. According to the account of Don Paolo Cappello the Orator of Venice, as given by Herr Gregorovius, Prince Don Alonso, going to the Vatican at eleven o’clock at night on the fifteenth of July, was assaulted on the steps of St. Peter’s by masked men armed with poignards, and wounded in the head and arms and thighs. Weak from loss of blood, he dragged himself into the Apostolic Palace, where his wife Madonna Lucrezia swooned at the sight of him. He was carried into one of the rooms; and a cardinal, believing him to be in the article of death, imparted the usual absolution. But his youthful vigour enabled him to progress on the road to recovery, under the nursing of his wife and of his sister-in-law Madonna Sancia, who, with their own hands, prepared his food (they were royal princesses), while the Pope’s Holiness provided a body-guard of men-at-arms. No one knew who had wounded the prince: but gossip said that it was the same hand that had slain the Duke of Gaudia. Duke Cesare de Valentinois had issued an edict forbidding any one bearing arms to pass between the Mola of Hadrian and the Vatican. Don Paolo Cappello further records that Duke Cesare had said, “I did not wound the prince: but, if I had “done so, he had well deserved it.” Duke Cesare was not ashamed to visit the invalid; and, in coming away, he had said, “That, which is not done at noon, can be done at sunset.” More than a month later, at nine o’clock on the night of the eighteenth of August, Duke Cesare again visited Prince Don Alonso; and, having driven Madonna Sancia and Madonna Lucrezia from the room, he introduced his captain Don Michelotto who strangled the wounded man.