Who, therefore, wishes to believe Messer Francesco Guicciardini uncorroborated, or corroborated by Messer Paolo Giovio, will do so on his own responsibility. Let it be noted that both Giovio and Guicciardini were Roman Catholics. Their calumnies against the Lord Alexander P.P. VI are their own; and were not invented by dissenters from their creed. The said calumnies very naturally have been adopted by these last as articles of faith; and repeated usque ad nauseam; or resented, with the most unconvincing and inane half-heartedness, by a majority of modern and soi-disant enlightened Roman Catholics, who fear (positively they shew every sign of fear) to credit their own learned clergy of the present day, Leonetti, Velron, Cerri, and Ollivier, to say nothing of the laity, _e.g._, Comte Réné de Maricourt, who have laboured for justice to the maligned Borgia. Will these astonishingly inconsistent persons prefer to believe the opinion of an atheist, who was incidentally a man of common sense? It is Voltaire who, in speaking of Guicciardini’s statement, (that the Lord Alexander P.P. VI was the victim of venom which He had set for his cardinals, that, having killed them, He might take their treasure,) says, “All the enemies of the Holy See have welcomed this horrible anecdote. I myself do not believe it at all; and my chief reason lies in its extreme improbability. It is evident that the envenoming of a dozen cardinals at supper would have caused the Father and the son[65] to become so execrable, that nothing could have saved them from the fury of the Roman people, and of the whole of Italy. Such a crime never could have been concealed. Even supposing that it had not been avenged by all Italy leagued together, it was directly contrary to the interests of Cesare (detto) Borgia. The Pope was on the verge of the grave. The Borgia faction was powerful enough to elect one of its own creatures: was it likely that the votes of cardinals would be gained by envenoming a dozen of them? I make bold to say to Guicciardini, ‘Europe has been deceived by you, and you have been deceived by your feelings. You were the enemy of the Pope; you have followed the advice of your hatred. It is true that He had used vengeance cruel and perfidious, against foes perfidious and cruel as Himself. Hence you conclude that a Pope of the age of seventy-two years could not die a natural death. You maintain, on vague rumour, that an aged sovereign, whose coffers at that time contained more than a million of gold ducats,[66] desired to envenom several cardinals that He might seize their treasures. But were these treasures so important? The treasures of cardinals nearly always were removed by their gentlemen before the Popes could seize them. Why do you think that so prudent a Pope cared to risk the doing of so very infamous a deed for so very small a gain; a deed that could not be done without accomplices; and that sooner or