'Not at all. He chanted as well as could possibly be. There is in his voice something so holy, so majestic, so angelic, that I could have imagined myself in heaven. When he lifted the cup, not I only, but many, could scarce restrain their tears.'
'Of what disorder did Cardinal Miquele die?' asked the French ambassador abruptly.
'Of drinking something disagreeable,' answered Don Juan Lopez dryly. The majority at Alexander's court were Spaniards like himself.
'They say,' observed Bertrando,'that on the day after the cardinal's death His Holiness declined to receive the Spanish ambassador on account of his grief.'
All exchanged glances. There were covert meanings in these remarks. The Pope's grief had been connected with counting the dead man's money which proved less than he had expected; and the unwholesome drink was the Borgia poison, a sweet white powder which killed slowly. Alexander had invented this easy method of acquiring money. He knew the incomes of all the cardinals, and when he wanted money would despatch the wealthiest of them to the other world, and declare himself the heir. He fattened them for the table. The German, Johann Burckhardt, master of the ceremonies, frequently noted deaths of prelates in his diary, adding the pregnant laconicism, Biberat calicem—'He had drunk of the cup.'
'Is it true, Monsignore,' asked Don Pedro Carranca, a chamberlain, 'that Cardinal Monreale is taken ill?'
'Really? What ails him?' cried d'Arborea alarmed.
'Vomiting.'
'Dio mio! Dio mio! the fourth!' sighed the poor cardinal. 'Orsini, Ferrari, Miquele, and now Monreale!'
'The waters of Tiber must be bad for your Eminences,' said Messer Bertrando slyly.