Four remain: Cardinals Giovanni Borgia (Giuniore), Gianbattista Ferrari (Cardinal of Modena), Gianbattista Orsini, and Giovanni Michieli, all of whom the Pope and Cesare have, more or less persistently, been accused of poisoning. Giovanni Borgia’s death at Fossombrone has been dealt with at length in its proper place, and it has been shown how utterly malicious and groundless was the accusation. Giovanni Michieli’s is the case that has just been reviewed, and touching which you may form your own conclusions. Gianbattista Orsini’s also has been examined. It rests upon rumour; but even if that rumour be true, it is unfair to consider the deed in any but the light of a political execution. There remains the case of the Cardinal of Modena, a man who had amassed enormous wealth in the most questionable manner, and who was universally execrated. The epigrams upon his death, in the form of epitaphs, dealt most terribly with “his ignominious memory”--as Burchard has it. Of these the Master of Ceremonies collected upwards of a score, which he gives in his Diarium. Let one suffice here as a fair example of the rest, the one that has it that the earth has the cardinal’s body, the bull (i.e. the Borgia) his wealth, and hell his soul. “Hac Janus Baptista jacet Ferrarius urna, Terra habuit corpus, Bos bona, Styx animam.” The only absolutely contemporary suggestion of his having been poisoned emanated from the pen of that same Giustiniani. He wrote to the Venetian Senate to announce the cardinal’s death on July 20. In his letter he relates how his benefices were immediately distributed, and how the lion’s share fell to the cardinal’s secretary, Sebastiano Pinzone, and that it was said (“é fama”) that this man had received them as the price of blood (“in premium sanguinis”), “since it is held, from many evident signs, that the cardinal died from poison” (“ex veneno”). Already on the 11th he had written: “The Cardinal of Modena lies ill, with little hope of recovery. Poison is suspected” (“si dubita di veleno”). That was penned on the eighth day of the cardinal’s sickness, for he was taken ill on the 3rd--as Burchard shows. Burchard, further, lays before us the whole course of the illness; tells us how, from the beginning, the cardinal refused to be bled or to take medicine of any kind, tells us explicitly and positively that the cardinal was suffering from a certain fever--so prevalent and deadly in Rome during the months of July and August; he informs us that, on the 11th (the day on which Giustiniani wrote the above-cited dispatch), the fever abated, to return on the 16th. He was attended (Burchard continues) by many able physicians, who strove to induce him to take their medicines; but he refused persistently until the following day, when he accepted a small proportion of the doses proposed. On July 20--after an illness of seventeen days--he finally expired.