Carraccioli, General of the Venetians, whose lovely wife I seized upon her journey, and who now sweetens my labour, should come to Rome with his _complaint_, send him Michelotto's brother to be his physician. I hear that he is a turbulent, hot-headed fellow, and therefore it will be as well to get rid of him. The tumult of arms has not made me forget my sister's widowhood: the envoy of the eldest son of the Duke of Este is already on the way to marry her, in his name. We have now massacred the most dangerous of our foes; if we can win over or exterminate (which is almost the same thing) the houses of Este and Medici, who will then have the audacity to oppose the Borgias in Italy? I kiss the feet of your holiness. "CAESAR BORGIA, Gonfalonier." Faustus, after reading this letter, looked angrily upward; but the Devil, without giving him time to moralise, led him to the Vatican, where they found the Pope overjoyed at the success which had attended his weapons. He had already ordered the remaining Orsinis, Alvianis, Santa Croces, and the other cardinals and archbishops, to be arrested, and awaited the event with impatience. All Rome hastened to congratulate him. Those who were marked out for destruction were seized in the Vatican, conducted into different prisons, and privately executed; whilst the myrmidons of the Pope plundered their palaces. The Cardinal Orsini alone was sent to the Castle of Saint Angelo, and was permitted, for a few days, to be supplied with food from his mother's kitchen; but the Pope, having heard that he possessed a pearl, very precious on account of its extraordinary size, retracted this favour. The mother of the once mighty and flourishing Orsinis went to the Vatican, and offered the Pope the pearl and two thousand crowns if he would liberate her son; when he seized the pearl and the money with one hand, and with the other gave the sign for the cardinal's execution. When Caesar Borgia learnt that the Pope had accomplished his design, he instantly commanded all his own prisoners to be assassinated; and, entering Rome in triumph, shared, with his holiness and the other illegitimates, the booty he had brought with him; and, in return, received his dividend of the confiscated property of the slaughtered cardinals and ecclesiastics.