Avon Modern Short Story Monthly #36 — page 90: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

et ee Bar cae Later public rumour accused others; indeed, ie seal in turn every man who could have been a possible perpetrator, attributing ao we «. 2 x ’ ¥ , : oy a ie to some of them the most fantastic and incredible motives. Once, prompted no doubt by their knowledge of the libertine, pleasure- loving nature of the dead Duke, rumour hit upon the actual cir- . cumstances of the murder so closely, indeed, that the Count of Miran- — dola’s house was visited by the bargelli and subjected to an examina- tion, at which Pico violently rebelled, appealing boldly to the Pope -__ against insinuations that reflected upon the honour of his daughter. Res The mystery remained impenetrable, and the culprit was never brought to justice. We know that in slaying Gandia, Giovanni Sforza ot - vented a hatred whose object was not Gandia, but Gandia’s father. _ His aim was to deal Pope Alexander the cruellest and most lingering of wounds, and if he lacked the avenger’s satisfaction of disclosing himself, at least he did not lack assurance that his blow had stricken home. He heard—as all Italy heard—from that wayfarer on the ___ bridge of Sant’ Angelo, how the Pope, in a paroxysm of grief at sight me of his son’s body fished from the Tiber, had bellowed in his agony o like a tortured bull, so that his cries within the castle were heard Ur upon the bridge. He learnt how the handsome, vigorous Pope stag- gered into the consistory of the 19th of that same month with the mien and gait of a palsied old man, and, in a voice broken with sobs, ____ proclaimed his bitter lament: is ye “Had we seven Papacies we would give them all to restore the Duke to life.” He might have been content. But he was not. That deep hate of ___ his against those who had made him a thing of scorn was not so easily to be slaked. He waited, spying his opportunity for further hurt. It came a year later, when Gandia’s brother, the ambitious Cesare Borgia, divested himself of his cardinalitial robes and rank, _ exchanging them for temporal dignities and the title of Duke of ___-YValentinois. Then it was that he took up the deadly weapon of calumny, putting it secretly about that Cesare was the murderer of ____his-brother, spurred to it by worldly ambition and by other motives __ which involved the’ principal members of the family. ‘Men do not mount to Borgia heights without making enemies. The evil tale was taken up in all its foul trappings, and, upon no SAU ae | . - comichooks (E)