July 5th Alexander held a service in her honor, and on his recovery he had himself borne in a procession to S.Maria del Popolo, where he offered the Virgin a goblet containing three hundred ducats.
Cardinal Piccolomini ostentatiously scattered the gold pieces over the altar before all the people.
The saints had saved a great sinner from the falling walls in the Vatican, but they refrained from interfering eighteen days later to prevent a hideous crime--the attempted murder of a guiltless person.

In vain had the youthful Alfonso of Biselli been warned by his own premonitions and by his friends during the past year to seek safety in flight.

He had followed his wife to Rome like a lamb to the slaughter, only to fall under the daggers of the assassins from whom she was powerless to save him.

Caesar hated him, as he did the entire house of Aragon, and in his opinion his sister's marriage to a Neapolitan prince had become as useless as had been her union with Sforza of Pesaro; moreover, it interfered with the plans of Caesar, who had a matrimonial alliance in mind for his sister which would be more advantageous to himself.

As her marriage with the Duke of Biselli had not been childless, and, consequently, could not be set aside, he determined upon a radical separation of the couple.
July 15, 1500, about eleven o'clock at night, Alfonso was on his way from his palace to the Vatican to see his consort; near the steps leading to S.Peter's a number of masked men fell upon him with daggers.
Severely wounded in the head, arm, and thigh, the prince succeeded in reaching the Pope's chamber.