The second case is that of the Lord Christopher Bainbridge, Cardinal-Presbyter of the Title of Santa Prassede, and Orator of King Henry VII Tudor at the Court of the Lord Leo P.P. X. He died in Rome, in 1514; and, says Mgr. Paris de Grassis the Caerimonarius, “when his death was ascribed to venom” (—_this surely ought to prove that the suspicion was habitual, and no more appropriate to the Borgia than to any other family of this period_,—) “by command of the Pope he was eviscerated, and it was found that his heart was diseased on the right side.” Now this Cardinal Bainbridge, whose death obviously was due to organic disease, has come down to posterity as a victim of venom; while Cardinal Dellarovere, whose _salma_ presented far more suspicious, in fact distinctly suspicious, symptoms, is reputed to have died a natural death! Of all the wonderful and subtile recipes for venoms which are believed to have been possessed by European potentates about this time, only one now is accessible: but it is dated 1540, exactly thirty-seven years after the Lord Alexander P.P. VI died of his double-tertian fever. It is a Venetian recipe, and comes from the Secret Archives of the Council of Ten.[75] Arsenic, antimony, orpiment, and aconite, are to be subjected to a long long process of preparation, similar to those wondrous stews in which Messer Giambattista della Porta, in company with every other respectable mage, had his continual joy; and, when all is done, the ignorant inventor of this horrible venom says that he cannot guarantee its success. Why? The dose of any single one of those four venomous ingredients alone would have been fatal. Why should their combination bring uncertainty? For the simple reason that the boiling and the sun-baking, the sublimation and the distillation, which so prolongedly was practised, set up chemical change, reaction, decomposition, destroyed the virtue or the nature, and effectually altered or annulled the venomous properties originally possessed by the subject of so much empiricism. As simples, they certainly would have been veneficous. As compounds, they might have caused grave inconvenience. But, heterogeneously compounded with alien matter, boiled to disintegration for weeks and months together, their effect surely could not be predicted. They might have been dangerous; or they might not: there is no knowing. * * * * * There is no defined charge against the House of Borgia of having compassed their enemies’ deaths by means of venomous rings. The vulgar conception of a venomous ring is not unconnected with a needle-point, (or point,) projecting from the bezel, along which a minute drop of deadly venom can be made to flow; and which pierces the hand that grasps it, inducing syncope and death. Or, another kind conceals a small box in the bezel, containing a tiny capsule of glass wherein venom innocuously lurks, until the glass is broken on the lips.