liness ready to take his place at table; as soon as
the cardinal was in sight, His Holiness, who was very pale, made one
step towards him; Caraffa doubled his pace, and handed the medallion to
him; but as the pope stretched forth his arm to take it, he fell back
with a cry, instantly followed by violent convulsions: an instant later,
as he advanced to render his father assistance, Caesar was similarly
seized; the effect of the poison had been more rapid than usual, for
Caesar had doubled the dose, and there is little doubt that their heated
condition increased its activity.

The two stricken men were carried side by side to the Vatican, where
each was taken to his own rooms: from that moment they never met again.

As soon as he reached his bed, the pope was seized with a violent fever,
which did not give way to emetics or to bleeding; almost immediately it
became necessary to administer the last sacraments of the Church; but
his admirable bodily constitution, which seemed to have defied old age,
was strong enough to fight eight days with death; at last, after a week
of mortal agony, he died, without once uttering the name of Caesar
or Lucrezia, who were the two poles around which had turned all his
affections and all his crimes. His age was seventy-two, and he had
reigned eleven years.

Caesar, perhaps because he had taken less of the fatal beverage, perhaps
because the strength of his youth overcame the strength of the poison,
or maybe, as some say, because when he reached his own rooms he had
swallowed an antidote known only to himself, was not so prostrated as to
lose sight for a moment of the terrible position he was in: he summoned
his faithful Michelotto, with those he could best count on among his
men, and disposed this band in the various rooms that led to his own,
ordering the chief never to leave the foot of his bed, but to sleep
lying on a rug, his hand upon the handle of his sward.

The treatment had been the same for Caesar as for the pope, but in
addition to bleeding and emetics strange baths were added, which Caesar
had himself asked for, having heard that in a similar case they had
once cured Ladislaus, King of Naples. Four posts, strongly welded to the
floor and ceiling, were set up in his room, like the machines at which
farriers shoe horses; every day a bull was brought in, turned over on
his back and tied by his four legs to the four posts; then, when he was
thus fixed, a cut was made in his belly