It was the age of poisoning. Pius III, a Piccolomini, Alexander’s successor, was poisoned within twenty-five days of his election. Leo X, the next pope, nearly fell a victim to a supposed conspiracy by which his surgeon was induced to poison an ulcer while dressing it. Leo escaped then but died five years later of poison, as it was strongly believed. This dastardly crime was greatly practised in Italy and was always much facilitated and encouraged. To a somewhat later date belongs the deadly _acquatofana_ so much used in Naples, and later throughout Europe to terrorise and ravage society. This fatal poison was invented by an old beldame in Naples, who was at last discovered and put to death. Akin to the infamous “succession powder,” the noxious drug was especially dear to great ladies tired of their husbands, and lay on their [Illustration: _Lucrezia Borgia Dancing_ The beautiful and gifted daughter of Pope Alexander VI, was also the sister of the infamous Cesare Borgia, who murdered her husband (his brother-in-law), Alfonso of Bisceglia. She was a patron of learning and the arts and was long accused of the gravest crimes but more recent writers have somewhat cleared her memory. Her three marriages were arranged to satisfy the ambitions of her father. ] dressing tables beside their perfumes and cosmetics, ready for instant administration. During the pontificate of Alexander VII there existed an association among ladies of quality in Rome, pledged to make away with their husbands by poison. Although proofs existed in plenty, the law did not dare to touch such high and mighty dames as the Princess Vitelleschi, the Duchess of Ceri and many others. By and by this system of poisoning extended even to the lower orders, and five women were hanged for having prepared bottles of distilled water containing arsenic by means of which many persons had poisoned their husbands and parents. Several of these were punished by being walled up alive in the dungeons of the Inquisition, and others were publicly beheaded. On the day of the execution a vast crowd gathered in the Campo di Fiori to see the horrible sight. One of the women, a certain Cecilla Bossi Verzellini, who had incited her daughter to poison her husband, was accompanied to the scaffold by a prince Barberini as a member of the confraternity of St. Giovanni Decollato, which confraternity had the sad privilege of attending the condemned in their last moments and of carrying out their last wishes. The prince, pitying the woman, urged the executioner to make haste, whereupon the man replied insolently that perhaps the prince could discharge the task better than he. The execution was left to an assistant, and the hangman was arrested immediately by order of the governor of Rome, whipped round the city and sent to the galleys. The severe measures used finally effected the suppression of this atrocious crime, if not its abolishment. CHAPTER III