Let it be remembered that Don Astorgio Manfredi was “un puto mal san,” a sickly or strumous lad. Let it be remembered how extremely easy it is to kill strong boys off, between their fourteenth and their eighteenth year, simply by depriving them of hope and joy. Let the most pathetic history of Don Astorgio Manfredi, of which the barest briefest extract has been given, let his situation, and that of his young brother Don Gianevangelista, be realized with care; and the humanly natural supposition will arise, that these two died natural deaths due to constitutional defects aggravated by hopeless imprisonment in the Mola of Hadrian. It would be hard, however, if the enemies of Borgia could find nothing worse to say; and the abominable Messer Francesco Guicciardini of Florence, pandar of France, minion of Ghibelline Colonna, does not fail to make use of that curiously common and invariably inconsequent calumny which mediocrity, in all ages, hurls at genius. He writes, “Astorgio was not deprived of life before having first been used, _they say_, to satiate the passions of a certain person.” Under the pen of historians who followed Guicciardini, this “certain person” quite naturally has become the Lord Alexander P.P. VI. It is on the authority of this Guicciardini that writers, far from the scene, and long after the deed, have allowed them to assail an old man, a priest, the Head of the Church, with a shameful and execrable accusation. Did Guicciardini make the very difficult examinations of this problematic corpse which medical-law ordains? He was inspired, and very badly, by his hatred. He has not proved the crimes of the Pope. He has only exhibited the fertility of a monstrously unclean and salacious imagination, the dévergondage of a mind stuffed with reminiscences of Tiberius, of Nero, of Elagabalus! (_Réné, Comte de Maricourt._) * * * * *