, the Countess Sforza-Riario, was liberated, as we know, from the
Castle of Sant' Angelo, and permitted to withdraw to Florence. But the
gates of that grim fortress, in opening to allow her to pass out, opened
also for the purpose of admitting Astorre and Gianevangelista, upon whom
they closed.

All that is known positively of the fate of these unfortunate young men
is that they never came forth again alive.

The record in Burchard (June 9, 1502) of Astorre's body having been
found in the Tiber with a stone round his neck, suffers in probability
from the addition that, "together with it were found the bodies of two
young men with their arms tied, a certain woman, and many others."

The dispatch of Giustiniani to the effect that: "It is said that
this night were thrown into Tiber and drowned the two lords of Faenza
together with their seneschal," was never followed up by any other
dispatch confirming the rumour, nor is it confirmed by any dispatch so
far discovered from any other ambassador, nor yet does the matter find
place in the Chronicles of Faenza.

But that is of secondary importance. The ugliest feature of the case is
not the actual assassination of the young men, but the fact that Cesare
had pledged himself that Astorre should go free, and yet had kept him
by him--at first, it would seem, in his train, and later as a
prisoner--until he put an end to his life. It was an ugly, unscrupulous
deed; but there is no need to exaggerate its heinousness, as is
constantly done, upon no better authority than Guicciardini's, who
wrote that the murder had been committed "saziata prima la libidine di
qualcuno."

Of all the unspeakable calumnies of which the Borgias have been the
subject, none is more utterly wanton than this foul exhalation of
Guicciardini's lewd invention. Let the shame that must eternally attach
to him for it brand also those subsequent writers who repeated and
retailed that abominable and utterly unsupported accusation, and more
particularly those who have not hesitated to assume that Guicciardini's
"qualcuno" was an old man in his seventy-second year--Pope Alexander VI.

Others a little more merciful, a little more careful of physical
possibilities (but no whit less salacious) have taken it that Cesare was
intended by the Florentine historian.

But, under one form or another, the lie has spread as only such foulness
can spread. It has become woven into the warp of history; it has grown
to be one of