h a "one, two, and three,"
fling it into the river; how he heard the horseman ask them had they
thrown it well into the middle, and their answer of, "Yes my lord"; and
finally, when asked why he had not come earlier to report the matter,
how he had answered that he had thought nothing of it, having in his
time seen more than a hundred bodies flung into the Tiber at night.

Returned to the garden gate, Giovanni bade the men go in without
him. There was something yet that he must do. When they had gone, he
dismounted, and went to the body of the groom which he had left under
the wall. He must remove that too. He cut one of the stirrup-leathers
from the saddle, and attaching one end of it to the dead man's arm,
mounted again, and dragged him thus--ready to leave the body and ride
off at the first alarm--some little way, until he came to the Piazza
della Giudecca. Here, in the very heart of the Jewish quarters, he left
the body, and his movements hereafter are a little obscure. Perhaps he
set out to return to Pico della Mirandola's house, but becoming, as was
natural, uneasy on the way, fearing lest all traces should, after all,
not have been effaced, lest the Duke should be traced to that house, and
himself, if found there, dealt with summarily upon suspicion, he
turned about, and went off to seek sanctuary with his uncle, the
Vice-Chancellor.

The Duke's horse, which he had ridden, he turned loose in the streets,
where it was found some hours later, and first gave occasion to rumours
of foul play. The rumours growing, with the discovery of the body of
Gandia's groom, and search-parties of armed bargelli scouring Rome, and
the Giudecca in particular, in the course of the next two days, forth at
last came Giorgio, that boatman of the Schiavoni, with the tale of what
he had seen. When the stricken Pope heard it, he ordered the bed of the
river to be dragged foot by foot, with the result that the ill-starred
Duke of Gandia was brought up in one of the nets, whereupon the
heartless Sanazzaro coined his terrible epigram concerning that
successor of Saint Peter, that Fisherman of Men.

The people, looking about for him who had the greatest motive for that
deed, were quick to fasten the guilt upon Giovanni Sforza, who by that
time was far from Rome, riding hard for the shelter of his tyranny of
Pesaro; and the Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, who was also mentioned, and
who feared to be implicated, apprehensive ever lest his page shoul