THE BORGIA DEATH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 14853, 2 December 1911, Page 5 (Supplement)

THE BORGIA DEATH.

We were supping in the garden house, in and Nicandro was our Ganymede, and little Lisette our Hebe. They made a pretty couple, and may have shared something less than a shirt between them. Nicandro placed the dish before his eminence.- It was confetti of creamed fruit,' and a perfume like "ambrosia rose from it. I had never seen the handsome, devilish face of Don Cesare look more gentle and ingratiatory than it did at that moment. Its expression put to rebuke the Holy Father's, which was as sick and Apollo's bower, for the month was August, flabby as .a skinned calf's. The old devil had not the nerve of his whelp—that is the truth. The dish was placed before his eminence, I say, and its fellow before each of the other two.

Lisette hung over the cardinal, with the flagon of wine in her hand. Her bosom pressed his neck; she laid her cheek upon his bald head, and, so standing, filled his glass. But Corneto put neither his hand to the dish nor hie lips to the ►beaker. Instead he rose, and so suddenly that he bruised the child's lips. " Blood !" said Cesaro, softly, and with a smile. "That is a harsh retort on love, Prince."

Then, in one moment, I recognised that I had misjudged his eminence, that he knew or guessed, and that a crisis was upon us. His eyes were like black glass in stone he looked into the black, excited eyes of his host. The two white, blackeyed faces, the one awful, the other wet and piteous, opposed each other. " la it your will, Borgia, that I eat of this dish ?" ho said.

" The Pope strove to reply, and no word could he articulate. But his son answered for him : " What distemper is this, Corneto? Come, rally thee, man, nor leave the feast uncrowned. One effort more; see, we will give thee the lead !" He ate himself, and made his father eat. When the two were finished, the cardinal addressed the Pope. " God forgive thee, Borgia," he said, " and prosper thy design, for all its worth." And he, in* his turn, ate of his sweet, and flung the dish from him. " Coneummatum est." he said. " I have my peace to make with heaven. I cravo Your Holiness's permission to withdraw."

Now Don Cesare rpso laughing, and rallying their guest, for his weak stomach, saw him for a distance through the gardens, and then himself returned. And there were we, the frightened witnesses, whispering half tearful now the thing was done, yet dreading that he should see and resent our tremors.

But the Pope sat staring with a ghastly face and Don Cesare sat down. beside him. and the two sat murmuring together. And suddenly, in one moment His Holiness uttered a mortal cry : " Corneto, I am poisoned ! He hath retorted on us with our own !" ■.' ■

It was true. The cardinal, well foreseeing his fate, had-prevailed, by bribes and prayers and promises, over the conscience of His Holiness's cook, and had induced the man to serve to his masters the poison intended for himself. The Borgia took the Borgia's own prescription, and died that niocht in torture. Cesare hung between hell and earth awhile, and presently escaped. This is all true as I record it.—From " Historical Vignettes," by Bernard Capes.