To that he adhered, whilst disposing, however, to lay siege to Ceri, where Giulio and Giovanni Orsini had taken refuge.
In the meantime, the Cardinal Gianbattista Orsini had breathed his last in the Castle of Sant' Angelo.
Soderini had written ironically to Florence on February 15: "Cardinal Orsini, in prison, shows signs of frenzy.

I leave your Sublimities to conclude, in your wisdom, the judgment that is formed of such an illness." It was not, however, until a week later--on February 22--that he succumbed, when the cry of "Poison!" grew so loud and general that the Pope ordered the cardinal's body to be carried on a bier with the face exposed, that all the world might see its calm and the absence of such stains as were believed usually to accompany venenation.
Nevertheless, the opinion spread that he had been poisoned--and the poisoning of Cardinal Orsini has been included in the long list of the Crimes of the Borgias with which we have been entertained.

That the rumour should have spread is not in the least wonderful, considering in what bad odour were the Orsini at the Vatican just then, and--be it remembered--what provocation they had given.

Although Valentinois dubbed Pandolfo Petrucci the "brain" of the conspiracy against him, the real guiding spirit, there can be little doubt, was this Cardinal Orsini, in whose stronghold at Magione the diet had met to plot Valentinois's ruin--the ruin of the Gonfalonier of the Church, and the fresh alienation from the Holy See of the tyrannies which it claimed for its own, and which at great cost had been recovered to it.
Against the Pope, considered as a temporal ruler, that was treason in the highest degree, and punishable by death; and, assuming that Alexander did cause the death of Cardinal Orsini, the only just censure that could fall upon him for the deed concerns the means employed.

Yet even against that it might be urged that thus was the dignity of the purple saved the dishonouring touch of the hangman's hands.
Some six weeks later--on April 10--died Giovanni Michieli, Cardinal of Sant' Angelo, and Giustiniani, the Venetian ambassador, wrote to his Government that the cardinal had been ill for only two days, and that his illness had been attended by violent sickness.