ABSTRACT
A. [Luigi Gonzaga protests his innocence of the Duke of Urbino's murder.]1 ... It does not seem likely to me (ifit be true, as I have heard, that his late Excellency was already sick of an infirmity which was regarded as serious before the barber arrived) that the Secretary2 would not have wished to see the illness diminished before placing himself in such danger.3 And I cannot imagine how in a serious illness occasion can have occurred to bathe the Duke's ears many times (that is, if the rumour be true which is spread abroad, that the barber had the opportunity to give him the poison many times through the ears), because in a grave and dangerous sickness it does not seem probable that the ears would be bathed much and often. And before going to Venice this last time he had never done such a thing.
