(iii) Lucrezia and Sancia attempt to protect him from poison by cooking his food in his room. This is quite incredible. Even admitting the readiness to do so on the part of these princesses, where was the need, considering the presence of the doctor--admitted by Capello--sent from Naples and his hunchback assistant? (iv) “The Pope had him guarded by sixteen men for fear the duke should kill him.” Yet when, according to Capello, the duke comes on his murderous errand, attended only by Michieli (who has been generally assumed by writers to have been Don Michele da Corella, one of Cesare’s captains), where were these sixteen guards? Capello mentions the dismissal only of Lucrezia and Sancia. (v) “Valentinois...said that what had not been done at breakfast might be done at supper.” It will be observed that Capello never once considers it necessary to give his authorities for anything that he states. It becomes, perhaps, more particularly noteworthy than usual in the case of this reported speech of Cesare’s. He omits to say to whom Cesare addressed those sinister words, and who reported them to him. The statement is hardly one to be accepted without that very necessary mention of authorities, nor can we conceive Capello omitting them had he possessed them. It will be seen that it is scarcely necessary to go outside of Capello’s own relation for the purpose of traversing the statements contained in it, so far as the death of Alfonso of Aragon is concerned. It is, however, still to be considered that, if Alfonso knew who had attempted his life--as Capello states that he told the Pope--and knew that he was in hourly danger of death from Valentinois, it may surely be taken for granted that he would have imparted the information to the Neapolitan doctor sent him by his uncle, who must have had his confidence. We know that, after the prince’s death, the physician and his hunchback assistant were arrested, but subsequently released. They returned to Naples, and in Naples, if not elsewhere, the truth must have been known--definite and authentic facts from the lips of eye-witnesses, not mere matters of rumour, as was the case in Rome. It is to Neapolitan writings, then, that we must turn for the truth of this affair; and yet from Naples all that we find is a rumour--the echo of the Roman rumour--“They say,” writes the Venetian ambassador at the Court of King Federigo, “that he was killed by the Pope’s son.”