Even Cesare can't console Lucrezia when she sees Paolo's noose-strung corpse. The very 'suicide note' found on her illiterate peasant lover confirms her suspicion it must have been murder, right up brother Juan's alley. It was indeed an execution staged my Micheletto, who meanwhile receives news from the very taxidermist who prepared the tortured-to-death prince Alfonso's body for king Ferrante's crazy tableau-vivant of royal cruelly, that the French king, recovering from the epidemic, is about to leave Napels. Even after an unlawful church funeral is discretely arranged for 'suicidal' Paolo, to convince Lucrezia she must nurture their son, she's out for bloody vengeance on Juan, before he must ride to Spain to marry, but he survives, unlike his whore of the day. The French army secured Sforza support and demands 'passage' to Rome to plunder it as punishment for the papal trickery. There's no way the papal army can mount a credible defense, not even enough bronze to cast a single canon, but Cesare and the papal sculptor come up with a crafty deception.
—KGF Vissers