orza fled in
March, in Holy Week. Under some pretext he went to the Church of S.
Onofrio, where he found the horse waiting for him.[51]

The request for the divorce was probably not made by Lucretia, but by
her father and brothers, who wished her to be free to enter into a
marriage which would advance their plans. We are ignorant of what was
now taking place in the Vatican, and we do not know that Lucretia made
any resistance; but if she did, it certainly was not of long duration,
for she does not appear to have loved her husband. Pesaro's escape did
not please the Borgias. They would have preferred to have silenced this
man forever; but now that he had gotten away and raised an objection, it
would be necessary to dissolve the marriage by process of law, which
would cause a great scandal.

Shortly after Sforza's flight a terrible tragedy occurred in the house
of Borgia--the mysterious murder of the Duke of Gandia. On the failure
of Alexander's scheme to confiscate the estates of the Orsini and bestow
them on his dearly beloved son, he thought to provide for him in another
manner. He made him Duke of Benevento, thereby hoping to prepare the way
for him to reach the throne of Naples. A few days later, June 14th,
Vannozza invited him and Caesar, together with a few of their kinsmen, to
a supper in her vineyard near S. Pietro in Vinculo. Don Giovanni,
returning from this family feast, disappeared in the night, without
leaving a trace, and three days later the body of the murdered man was
found in the Tiber.

According to the general opinion of the day, which in all probability
was correct, Caesar was the murderer of his brother. From the moment
Alexander VI knew this crime had been committed, and assumed
responsibility for its motives and consequences, and pardoned the
murderer, he became morally accessory after the fact, and fell himself
under the power of his terrible son. From that time on, every act of his
was intended to further Caesar's fiendish ambition.

None of the records of the day say that Don Giovanni's consort was in
Rome when this tragedy occurred. We are therefore forced to assume that
she was not there when her husband was murdered. It is much more likely
that she had not left Spain, and that she was living with her two little
children in Gandia or Valencia, where she received the dreadful news in
a letter written by Alexander to his sister Dona Beatrice Boria y
Arenos. This is rendered probable by the