new ones Melchiore Copis and Adriano Castellense, who had taken the name
of Adrian of Carneta from that town where he had been born, and
where, in the capacity of clerk of the chamber, treasurer-general, and
secretary of briefs, he had amassed an immense fortune.

So, when all was settled between Caesar and the pope, they invited
their chosen guests to supper in a vineyard situated near the Vatican,
belonging to the Cardinal of Corneto. In the morning of this day, the
2nd of August, they sent their servants and the steward to make all
preparations, and Caesar himself gave the pope's butler two bottles
of wine prepared with the white powder resembling sugar whose mortal
properties he had so often proved, and gave orders that he was to
serve this wine only when he was told, and only to persons specially
indicated; the butler accordingly put the wine an a sideboard apart,
bidding the waiters on no account to touch it, as it was reserved for
the pope's drinking.

[The poison of the Borgias, say contemporary writers, was of two kinds,
powder and liquid. The poison in the form of powder was a sort of
white flour, almost impalpable, with the taste of sugar, and called
Contarella. Its composition is unknown.

The liquid poison was prepared, we are told in so strange a fashion that
we cannot pass it by in silence. We repeat here what we read, and vouch
for nothing ourselves, lest science should give us the lie.

A strong dose of arsenic was administered to a boar; as soon as the
poison began to take effect, he was hung up by his heels; convulsions
supervened, and a froth deadly and abundant ran out from his jaws; it
was this froth, collected into a silver vessel and transferred into a
bottle hermetically sealed, that made the liquid poison.]

Towards evening Alexander VI walked from the Vatican leaning on Caesar's
arm, and turned his steps towards the vineyard, accompanied by Cardinal
Caraffa; but as the heat was great and the climb rather steep, the pope,
when he reached the top, stopped to take breath; then putting his hand
on his breast, he found that he had left in his bedroom a chain that
he always wore round his neck, which suspended a gold medallion that
enclosed the sacred host. He owed this habit to a prophecy that an
astrologer had made, that so long as he carried about a consecrated
wafer, neither steel nor poison could take hold upon him. Now, finding
himself without his talisman, he ordered Monsignors Caraffa t