John Bond

“ Rome is full of dark and distressing memories but nowhere more so than where the Tiber makes its historic elbow toward the Gianicolo.
Almost within the shadow of the grim castle was committed the blackest of all the crimes of the house of Borgia—the one crime that shook even the remorseless soul of Alexander VI to its depths and drove him in fear and trembling from his chambers in the Vatican into the gray and dismal silence of this refuge in his favorite fortress. The crime itself is one of the unsolved mysteries of the ages. ”

“ The funeral took place at night—the uncoffined corpse, ghastly pale in the glare of the torches that led the way, was carried to Santa Maria del Popolo, the favorite church of the Borgia Pope, who had built an altar in the sacristy when the church was in his charge as cardinal. There in the grave of his mother's family the poor youth was laid to rest, and up into the middle of the Eighteenth Century masses continued to be said there for the repose of his soul and that of his mother, who was buried in the same tomb many years later. ”

“ Only the facts themselves are eloquent and from them we must piece out our theories as to the guilty and their motives and as to the last moments of the victim. Let then the facts speak for themselves. ”