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Rh Signor Duca, el di inante." The despised Leonetti has the right date. "It is not surprising that two men, living under the same conditions and in the same place, should suffer from fever at the same time." It is a case, not of two men, but of three ; for Cardinal Hadrian afterwards assured Jovius that he had been poisoned. When three men who have dined together are seized with such illness that the oldest dies, and the youngest is prostrated during the most critical week of his life, we even now suspect verdigris in the saucepan or a toadstool in the mushrooms. Villari, whose authority stands high, maintains that the suspicion of poison arose when the pope was dead. But on 18th August Sanuto writes: "Si divulga per Roma sia sta atosegado" ; and Priuli has the following entry on the 16th: "Furono lettere da Roma volantissime, per le qual s'intendeva come il Sommo Pontifice essendo stato a solazzo a cena del Rmo Cardinale chiamato Adriano, insieme col Duca Valentino et alcuni altri Cardinali, havendo crapulato ad sobrietatem, essendo ritornato al Pontificale Palazzo, s' era buttato al letto con la febre molto grave, per la qual infermita si giudicava fosse stato avvelenato, e questo perchè etiam il giorno seguente il prefato Duca Valentino et il Cardinal s' erano buttati al letto con la febre." On the other hand, the only direct authorities available — Giustinian, Costabili, and Burchard — report that Alexander died a natural death, and it would appear that the famous supper took place nearly a week before the guests were taken ill. Giustinian writes on 13th August: "Uno di questi zorni, e fo ozi otto di, andorno a cena ad una vigna del Rmo Adriano, e stettero fin a notte ; dove intravennero etiam altre persone, e tutti se ne hanno risentito."

Mr. Creighton warns us against the credulous malignity of the writers he is compelled to use. It must be appraised, he says, as carefully as the credulity of earlier chroniclers in believing miraculous stories. It will not do to press the analogy between Cæsarius or the Liber Conformitatum, and Infessura or Burchard. Mr. Creighton accepts the most scandalous of the scenes