“There were found in Tiber, suffocated and dead, the lord of Faenza, a youth of about the age of eighteen years, beautiful and well-shaped, with a stone at his neck; and two youths bound together by the arms, the one of fifteen and the other of twenty-five years; and near them a certain woman, and several others.” It is said also that the victims were floating in Tiber in the sight of all. The affair is the occasion of another of the calumnies which have been cast upon the House of Borgia. Not one word is said by contemporaries implicating Borgia in this crime: yet the modern fiction-monger or quoad-historian who without hesitation did not place it to Borgia’s debit would consider himself guilty of dereliction of duty. The statements of the Venetian and the German, quoted above, will not bear examination in the light of common sense. A rational and unprejudiced observer will have noticed that Giustiniani does not speak of having seen with his own eyes. He is not imparting official information: he reports a mere _on dit_. But Burchard’s account is a miracle of Teutonic completeness at all costs, and lack of sense of the ridiculous. He does not say that he has seen the show. He gives no authority for his statements. But he adds, to Don Astorgio and Don Gianevangelista, a youth of twenty-five, a certain woman, and several others! Is any reliance to be placed on Burchard, uncorroborated and unashamed? He says that the corpse of Don Astorgio had a stone at his neck, yet he was floating on Tiber in the sight of all! How can a cadaver float when weighted with a stone? The density of Tiber is not like that of the Dead Sea or Droitwich Brine Baths. Also, Tiber notoriously is a swift current, far too turbid to permit a crowd of corpses placidly to float in the sight of all. Also, Tiber exclusively was used for drinking and household purposes, and constantly by all Romans, high and low, for swimming: the heraklean Lord Cardinal Prince Ippolito d’Este swam there. Also, the Borgia were pre-eminently clever—cunning, their calumniators say. Then, is it probable that men of any common sense would offer a hecatomb of assassinations to Tiber, and to the sight of all, weighted only by Burchard’s single stone? Finally, how is it that in the history of Faenza, and of the relations of these young lords, there is not a single allusion to the manner of their death? The learned Padre Leonetti justly contends that the story of the murder is a mere fabrication; that the scribes, with Burchard and Giustiniani, have seen no floating bodies; but that they have contented themselves, according to their custom, with fresh vilifications of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI and of Duke Cesare de Valentinois.