About this time a serious conspiracy against Leo was discovered. The prime mover in it was Alfonso Petrucci, Cardinal of Siena, whose property having been confiscated, and his family ruined by the Pontiff, he burned for revenge, and induced one Battista, a famous surgeon of Vercelli, along with the Pope's valet, to enter into his views. Leo being ill of fistula, it was arranged that Battista, who had procured recommendations as a skilful operator, should introduce poison into the dressings. The plot was revealed in time, and the Pontiff used every art, with promises of reconciliation and renewed favour, to entice the principal culprit to Rome. Having with difficulty effected this, he imprisoned him, along with his brother-cardinals Raffaello Riario and Bandinello Bishop of Sauli, along with the captain of the Sienese troops. Cardinal Alfonso was secretly put to death; the surgeon and the valet were publicly hanged and quartered; Sauli, condemned to perpetual imprisonment, was liberated but to die; while Riario, after purchasing at a high rate restoration to his escheated dignities, spent the brief remainder of his life in voluntary exile. Cardinals Soderini and Adriano of Corneto (the latter of whom held the sees of Hereford and Bath, and was papal collector in England), having confessed in open consistory their privacy to the plot, escaped from Rome. The former was saved by chancing to ride out to the chase on a mule, instead of going as usual in his litter, which followed at some distance, and was seized by the guard in consequence of his scarlet robe being left in it, whilst the culprit, in a simple chaplain's dress, fled to the Colonna strongholds. A mystery which hung over the fate of Adriano has been partially cleared up by my friend Mr. Rawdon Brown from the Sanuto Diaries, wherein it appears that he safely reached Venice through Calabria, and that the occasion of his unaccountable disappearance was a journey to the conclave on Leo's death, not his flight from Rome in the present year, as stated by Guicciardini, Valeriano, and Roscoe.[276] [Footnote 276: Vat. Urb. MSS., No. 907, f. 28, 30. The Minio despatches are full of details of this conspiracy unknown to Roscoe.]