Don Antonio Giustiniani, the Orator of Venice, sent to his Senate a dispatch dated the eleventh of July 1503, in which he wrote: “I went to the palace; and, on entering His apartment, I found our Lord the Pope in His habits reclining on a couch. He received me with good humour, saying that for three days He had been inconvenienced by a slight dysentery, but that He hoped it would be unimportant.” On the next day Giustiniani wrote: “The Pope’s Holiness reviewed His troops from a balcony.” On the fourteenth of July, he wrote again: “I went to the palace; and, on entering, I found His Holiness on His throne in the Hall of Pontiffs. He was a little depressed: but looked well.” Messer Francesco Fortucci, the Orator of Florence, sent to his Signoria a dispatch dated the twentieth of July, in which he wrote: “There are many people sick of fevers, and many have died.” On the twenty-second of July, he wrote: “I thank the Signoria for leave of absence, because I myself am uneasy, and almost out of my mind with fright; for so many people are dying of fever, and there is also something like the Pest.” On the evening of the fifth of August, the Lord Alexander P.P. VI rode with Duke Cesare and several prelates to a supper _al fresco_ at the villa of the Cardinal of San Crisogono outside the walls. Rome and the surrounding country are particularly unwholesome, though cool, during the hour after sunset. It is said that the Holiness of the Pope was much heated by the exertion of riding there; and that, while He was in this condition, He drank a cup of wine for the sake of coolness. No more hazardous action can be imagined; except on the part of one desiring to court a malarial fever. Two days later, on the seventh of August, the Orator Giustiniani wrote to his government: “I found the Pope less cheerful and more dull than usual. He said to me _Sir Orator, all these sick people in Rome, all these daily deaths, make Us fearful, and persuade Us to take more care of Our person._” Monsignor Hans Burchard, the Caerimonarius, wrote in his Diarium: “On the twelfth of August, after vespers, between the twenty-first and twenty-second hour, (5–6 P.M.) He (the Pope’s Holiness) shewed signs of a fever which does not abate.” It should be noted that this is seven days after the garden-supper. On the thirteenth of August, Giustiniani wrote to his sovereign the Doge of Venice, that the Pope had vomited after eating, and had been feverish all night; that Duke Cesare also was sick: and that no one was admitted to the Vatican. He tells about the supper in the garden of the Cardinal of San Crisogono; and adds: “To-morrow morning I will try to have precise information to send to Your Sublimity.” These dispatches give an excellent idea of some of the duties of a Sixteenth Century ambassador, to hang about doors of palaces, to chronicle performances of natural functions, to bribe royal flunkeys and report their gossip in state-dispatches.