no longer a question of a sudden capture, but of
a regular siege; so he began to make all his arrangements with a view
to it, and placing a battery of cannon in front of the place where the
walls seemed to him weakest, he ordered an uninterrupted fire, to be
continued until the breach was practicable.

When he returned to the camp after giving this order, he found there
Gian Borgia, who had gone to Rome from Ferrara and was unwilling to be
so near Caesar without paying him a visit: he was received with effusion
and apparently the greatest joy, and stayed three days; on the fourth
day all the officers and members of the court were invited to a grand
farewell supper, and Caesar bade farewell to his cousin, charging him
with despatches for the pope, and lavishing upon him all the tokens of
affection he had shown on his arrival.

Cardinal Gian Bargia posted off as soon as he left the supper-table,
but on arriving at Urbino he was seized with such a sudden and strange
indisposition that he was forced to stop; but after a few minutes,
feeling rather better, he went on; scarcely, however, had he entered
Rocca Cantrada when he again felt so extremely ill that he resolved
to go no farther, and stayed a couple of days in the town. Then, as he
thought he was a little better again, and as he had heard the news
of the taking of Forli and also that Caterina Sforza had been taken
prisoner while she was making an attempt to retire into the castle, he
resolved to go back to Caesar and congratulate him on his victory; but
at Fassambrane he was forced to stop a third time, although he had given
up his carriage for a litter. This was his last halt: the same day he
sought his bed, never to rise from it again; three days later he was
dead.

His body was taken to Rome and buried without any ceremony in the church
of Santa Maria del Populo, where lay awaiting him the corpse of his
friend the Duke of Gandia; and there was now no more talk of the young
cardinal, high as his rank had been, than if he had never existed. Thus
in gloom and silence passed away all those who were swept to destruction
by the ambition of that terrible trio, Alexander, Lucrezia, and Caesar.

Almost at the same time Rome was terrified by another murder. Don
Giovanni Cerviglione, a gentleman by birth and a brave soldier, captain
of the pope's men-at-arms, was attacked one evening by the sbirri, as he
was on his way home from supping with Dan Elisio Pignatelli. One of t