There was no time to lose, and Caesar summoned Michelotto.
"The same night," says Burcardus, "Don Alfonso, who would not die of his wounds, was found strangled in his bed." The funeral took place the next day with a ceremony not unbecoming in itself, though, unsuited to his high rank.

Dan Francesca Bargia, Archbishop of Cosenza, acted as chief mourner at St.Peter's, where the body was buried in the chapel of Santa Maria delle Febbre.
Lucrezia arrived the same evening: she knew her father and brother too well to be put on the wrong scent; and although, immediately after Alfonso's death, the Duke of Valentinois had arrested the doctors, the surgeons, and a poor deformed wretch who had been acting as valet, she knew perfectly well from what quarter the blow had proceeded.

In fear, therefore, that the manifestation of a grief she felt this time too well might alienate the confidence of her father and brother, she retired to Nepi with her whole household, her whole court, and more than six hundred cavaliers, there to spend the period of her mourning.
This important family business was now settled, and Lucrezia was again a widow, and in consequence ready to be utilized in the pope's new political machinations.

Caesar only stayed at Rome to receive the ambassadors from France and Venice; but as their arrival was somewhat delayed, and consider able inroads had been made upon the pope's treasury by the recent festivities, the creation of twelve new cardinals was arranged: this scheme was to have two effects, viz., to bring 600,000 ducats into the pontifical chest, each hat having been priced at 50,000 ducats, and to assure the pope of a constant majority in the sacred council.
The ambassadors at last arrived: the first was M.de Villeneuve, the same who had come before to see the Duke of Valentinois in the name of France.
Just as he entered Rome, he met on the road a masked man, who, without removing his domino, expressed the joy he felt at his arrival.

This man was Caesar himself, who did not wish to be recognised, and who took his departure after a short conference without uncovering his face.