Matarazzo's story of the murder of the Duke of Gandia upsetting the
theory which Gregorovius himself prefers, by fastening the guilt
upon Giovanni Sforza, he devotes some space to showing--with perfect
justice--that Matarazzo is no authority at all.

The Letter to Silvio Savelli opens by congratulating him upon his escape
from the hands of the robbers who had stripped him of his possessions,
and upon his having found a refuge in Germany at the Emperor's Court.
It proceeds to marvel that thence he should have written letters to
the Pope begging for justice and reinstatement, his wonder being at the
credulity of Savelli in supposing that the Pope--"betrayer of the human
race, who has spent his life in betrayals"--will ever do any just thing
other than through fear or force. Rather does the writer suggest the
adoption of other methods; he urges Savelli to make known to the Emperor
and all princes of the Empire the atrocious crimes of that "infamous
wild beasts" which have been perpetrated in contempt of God and
religion. He then proceeds to relate these crimes. Alexander, Cesare,
and Lucrezia, among others of the Borgia family, bear their share of the
formidable accusations. Of the Pope are related perfidies, simonies, and
ravishments; against Lucrezia are urged the matter of her incest, the
supper of the fifty courtesans, and the scene of the stallions; against
Cesare there are the death of Biselli, the murder of Pedro Caldes, the
ruin of the Romagna, whence he has driven out the legitimate lords, and
the universal fear in which he is held.

It is, indeed, a compendium of all the stories which from Milan, Naples,
and Venice--the three States where the Borgias for obvious reasons are
best hated--have been disseminated by their enemies, and a more violent
work of rage and political malice was never uttered. This malice becomes
particularly evident in the indictment of Cesare for the ruin of the
Romagna. Whatever Cesare might have done, he had not done that--his
bitterest detractor could not (without deliberately lying) say that the
Romagna was other than benefiting under his sway. That is not a matter
of opinion, not a matter of inference or deduction. It is a matter of
absolute fact and irrefutable knowledge.

To return now to the two entries in Burchard's Diarium when considered
in conjunction with the Letter to Silvio Savelli (which Burchard quotes
in full), it is remarkable that nowhere else in the discovered writin