Angelic stable boy Paolo becomes the confidant of Lucrezia, who experiences the marital bed as counted torture thrusts. Paolo even sabotages the master's saddle, provoking an incapacitating fall. The pope charges cardinal Ascanio Sforza with talking his relative, the Sforza duke Ludovico of Milan, out of passively supporting a French invasion. Alexndar further threatens the Holy See could otherwise support his cousin Gian Galaezzo's claim to the Lombardy throne, but the rival is simply poisoned in a glutinous last dinner. To assure Florentine resistance to the French, cardinal Cesare promises chief minister Macchiavelli the inquisition will rid its bankers of preaching monk Savonarola. Key to the Italian defense is large realm Napels, so the pope considers marrying off a junior son. Cesare meanwhile finds baron Bonadeo's foxy wife Ursula eager to start a discrete affair with him.
—KGF Vissers