Note 284 — Front matter (continued 5)
Reading edition
There is, as Pastor and Creighton admit, grave reason to think that Orsini and Michiel were poisoned, but charges of this kind are difficult to check, and certainly there is a good deal of romance in the Borgia legend. The death-rate of cardinals under Alexander was not more than normal. See Baron Corvo's Chronicles of the House of Borgia (1901), and R. Sabatini's Life of Cesare Borgia (1911).