'Another omen,' he muttered, turning pale; and at once he went to his apartment and lay down. In the night he was seized with violent vomiting. The physicians had different opinions about his malady; some called it a tertian fever; others apoplexy, others inflammation of the gall bladder. In the town it was said that he was poisoned.
Every hour his strength declined. Ten days later they had recourse to their extreme measure, and gave him a decoction of precious stones reduced to powder. Still he grew worse.
One night, awaking from delirium, he fumbled anxiously in his breast for a small gold reliquary worn by him for many years and containing minute particles of the body and blood of the Lord. The astrologers had told him his life was safe so long as he carried it. But now, whether it had been lost or stolen, it could nowhere be found, and he closed his eyes in the calm of despair, saying—
'It means I am to go: all is ended.'
Next morning, feeling the weakness of death coming over him, he required all to leave him except his favourite physician, the Bishop of Venosa. Him he reminded of the remedy employed by a Hebrew doctor on his predecessor, Innocent VIII., namely, the injection into the veins of the dying Pope of the blood of three children newly slain.
'Does your Holiness know how it ended?' asked the bishop.
'I know! I know!' said Alexander faintly. 'But the children were seven years old and they should have been unweaned.'
The bishop made no reply; already the sick man's eyes were clouding, and he fell back into delirium.
'Yes; quite young: little white ones! They whose blood is pure and scarlet. I love children! Let them come to me. Sinite parvulos ad me venire! Suffer little children to come unto me!' ...
At these ravings, even the imperturbable bishop, long inured to the horrors of the court, could not repress a shudder. With monotonous convulsive movements, the Pope still fumbled and groped in his bosom for the vanished reliquary.