Note 9 — Chapter XIX

This passage appears conclusive as to the fact of poison having been taken by the Pontiff; and it will be observed that Sanuto's story of the confection-boxes in no way accounts for the illness of Valentino, which is equally passed over in another totally different statement of this affair, given in the Appendix to Ranke's History of the Popes, section i. No. 4,—omissions to be kept in view in testing the probability of these conflicting accounts. Roscoe seems to have subsequently abandoned the doubts thrown upon the poisoning in his first edition, although ever prone to extenuate vices of the Borgia: witness his elaborate defence of Lucrezia, or his views as to the Duke of Gandia's murder and the massacre of Sinigaglia. Voltaire treats the question like a habitual doubter, with the ingenuity of a critic rather than the matured judgment of a historian. He is answered, with perhaps unnecessary detail, by Masse, to whom Sanuto was unknown.