Less than a year after her marriage with Lelia Buonvisi, Lucrezia resumed her former intimacy with Massimiliano Arnolfini. He was scarcely two yeara her elder, and they had already exchanged vows of fidelity in Ferrara. Massimiliano's temper inclined him to extreme courses; he was quick and fervent in all the disputes of his age, ready to back his quarrels with the sword, and impatient of delay in any matter he had undertaken. Owing to a feud which then subsisted between the families of Arnolfini and Boccella, he kept certain bravi in his service, upon whose devotion he relied. This young man soon found means to open a correspondence with Lucrezia, and arranged meetings with her in the house of some poor weavers who lived opposite the palace of the Buonvisi. Nothing passed between them that exceeded the limits of respectful court ship. But the situation became irksome to a lover so hot of blood as Massimiliano was. On the evening of June 5, in 1593, his men attacked Lelio Buonvisi, while returning with Lucrezia from prayers in an adjacent church. Lelio fell, stabbed with nineteen thrusts of the poignard, and was carried lifeless to his house. Lucrezia made her way back alone; and when her husband's corpse was brought into the palace, she requested that it should be laid out in the basement. A solitary witness of this act of violence, Vincenzo di Coreglia, deposed to having raised the dying man from the ground, put earth into his mouth by way of Sacrament, and urged him to forgive his enemies before he breathed his last. The weather had been very bad that day, and at nightfall it was thundering incessantly.
Inquisition was made immediately into the causes of Lelio's death. According to Lucrezia's account, her husband had reproved some men upon the road for singing obscene songs, whereupon they turned and murdered him. The corpse was exposed in the Church of the Servi, where multitudes of people gathered round it; and there an ancient dame of the Buonvisi house, flinging herself upon her nephew's body, vowed vengeance, after the old custom of the Vocero, against his murderers. Other members of the family indicated Massimiliano as the probable assassin; but he meantime had escaped, with three of his retainers, to a villa of his mother's at S. Pancrazio, whence he managed to take the open country and place himself in temporary safety. During this while, the judicial authorities of Lucca were not idle. The Podestà issued a proclamation inviting evidence, under the menace of decapitation and confiscation of goods for whomsoever should be found to have withheld information. To this call a certain Orazio Carli, most imprudently, responded. He confessed to having been aware that Massimiliano was plotting the assassination of somebody—not Lelio; and said that he had himself facilitated the flight of the assassins by preparing a ladder, which he placed in the hands of a bravo called Ottavio da Trapani. This revelation delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to the judicial authorities, who at the same time imprisoned Vincenzo da Coreglia, the soldier present at the murder.
Massimiliano and his men meanwhile had made their way across the frontier to Garfagnana. Their flight, and the suspicions which attached to them, rendered it tolerably certain that they were the authors of the crime. But justice demanded more circumstantial information, and the Podestà decided to work upon the two men already in his clutches. On June 4, Carli was submitted to the torture. The rack elicited nothing new from him, but had the result of dislocating his arms. He was then placed upon an instrument called the 'she-goat,' a sharp wooden trestle, to which the man was bound with weights attached to his feet, and where he sat for nearly four hours. In the course of this painful exercise, he deposed that Massimiliano and Lucrezia had been in the habit of meeting in the house of Vincenzo del Zoppo and Pollonia his wife, where the bravi also congregated and kept their arms. Grave suspicion was thus cast on Lucrezia. Had she perchance connived at her husband's murder? Was she an accomplice in the tragedy?
Lucrezia's peril now became imminent. Her brother, Giovan Lorenzo Malpigli, who remained her friend throughout, thought it best for her to retire as secretly as possible into a convent. The house chosen was that of S. Chiara in the town of Lucca. On June 5, she assumed the habit of S. Francis, cut her hair, changed her name from Lucrezia to Umilia, and offered two thousand crowns of dower to this monastery. Only four days had elapsed since her husband's assassination. But she, at all events, was safe from immediate peril; for the Church must now be dealt with; and the Church neither relinquished its suppliants, nor disgorged the wealth they poured into its coffers. The Podestà, when news of this occurrence reached him, sent at once to make inquiries. His messenger, Ser Vincenzo Petrucci, was informed by the Abbess that Lucrezia had just arrived and was having her hair shorn. At his request, the novice herself appeared—'a young woman, tall and pale, dressed in a nun's habit, with a crown upon her head.' She declared herself to be 'Madonna Lucretiina Malpigli, widow of Lelio Buonvisi.' The priest who had conducted her reception, affirmed that 'the gentle lady, immediately upon her husband's death, conceived this good prompting of the spirit, and obeyed it on the spot.'
For the moment, Lucrezia, whom in future we must call Sister Umilia, had to be left unmolested. The judges returned to the interrogation of their prisoners. Vincenzo del Zoppo and his wife Pollonia, in whose house the lovers used to meet, were tortured; but nothing that implied a criminal correspondence transpired from their evidence. Then the unlucky Carli was once more put to the strappado. He fell into a deep swoon, and was with difficulty brought to life again. Next his son, a youth of sixteen years, was racked with similar results. On June 7, they resolved to have another try at Vincenzo da Coreglia. This soldier had been kept on low diet in his prison during the last week, and was therefore ripe, according to the judicial theories of those times, for salutary torments. Having been strung up by his hands, he was jerked and shaken in the customary fashion, until he declared his willingness to make a full confession. He had been informed, he said, that Massimiliano intended to assassinate Lelio by means of his three bravi, Pietro da Castelnuovo, Ottavio da Trapani, and Niccolo da Pariana. He engaged to stand by and cover the retreat of these men. It was Carli, and not Massimiliano, who had made overtures to him. On being once more tortured, he only confirmed this confession. Carli was again summoned, and set upon the 'she-goat,' with heavy weights attached to his feet. The poor wretch sat for two hours on this infernal machine, the sharp edges and spikes of which were so contrived as to press slowly and deeply upon the tenderest portions of his body.[192] But he endured this agony without uttering a word, until the judges perceived that he was at the point of death. Next day, the 8th of June, Coreglia was again summoned to the justice-chamber. Terrified by the prospect of future torments, and wearied out with importunities, he at last made a clean breast of all he knew. It was not Carli, but Massimiliano himself, who had engaged him; and he had assisted at the murder of Lelio, which was accomplished by two of the bravi, Ottavio and Pietro. Coreglia said nothing to implicate Sister Umilia. On the contrary he asserted that she seemed to lose her senses when she saw her husband fall.
The General Council, to whom the results of these proceedings were communicated, published an edict of outlawry against Massimiliano and his three bravi. A price of 500 crowns was put upon the head of each, wherever he should be killed; and 1,000 crowns were offered to any one who should kill Massimiliano within the city or state of Lucca. At the same time they sent an envoy to Rome requesting the Pope's permission to arrest Umilia, on the ground that she was gravely suspected of being privy to the murder, and of entering the convent to escape justice. A few days afterwards, the miserable witnesses, Carli and Coreglia, were beheaded in their prison.
The Chancellor, Vincenzo Petrucci, left Lucca on June 12, and reached Rome on the 14th. He obtained an audience from Clement VIII. upon the 15th. When the Pope had read the letter of the Republic, he struck his palm down on his chair, and cried: 'Jesus! This is a grave case! It seems hardly possible that a woman of her birth should have been induced to take share in the murder of her husband.' After some conversation with the envoy, he added: 'It is certainly an ugly business. But what can we do now that she has taken the veil?' Then he promised to deliberate upon the matter, and return an answer later. Petrucci soon perceived that the Church did not mean to relinquish its privileges, and that Umilia was supported by powerful friends at court. Cardinal Castrucci remarked in casual conversation: 'She is surely punished enough for her sins by the life of the cloister.' A second interview with Clement on June 21 confirmed him in the opinion that the Republic would not obtain the dispensation they requested. Meanwhile the Signory of Lucca prepared a schedule of the suspicions against Umilia, grounded upon her confused evidence, her correspondence with Massimiliano, the fact that she had done nothing to rescue Lelio by calling out, and her sudden resort to the convent. This paper reached the Pope, who, on July 8, expressed his view that the Republic ought to be content with leaving Umilia immured in her monastery; and again, upon the 23rd, he pronounced his final decision that 'the lady, being a nun, and tonsured and prepared for the perfect life, is not within the jurisdiction of your Signory. It is further clear that, finding herself exposed to the calumnies of those two witnesses, and injured in her reputation, she took the veil to screen her honor.' On August 13, Petrucci returned to Lucca.
Clement conceded one point. He gave commission to the Bishop of Lucca to inquire into Umilia's conduct within the precincts of the monastery. But the council refused this intervention, for they were on bad terms with the Bishop, and resented ecclesiastical interference in secular causes. Moreover, they judged that such an inquisition without torture used, and in a place of safety, would prove worse than useless. Thus the affair dropped.
Meanwhile we may relate what happened to Massimiliano and his bravi. They escaped, through Garfagnana and Massa, into the territory of Alfonso Malaspina, Marquis of Villafranca and Tresana. This nobleman, who delighted in protecting outlaws, placed the four men in security in his stronghold of Tresana. Pietro da Castelnuovo was an outlaw from Tuscany for the murder of a Carmelite friar, which he had committed at Pietrasanta a few days before the assassination of Lelio. Seventeen years after these events he was still alive, and wanted for grave crimes committed in the Duchy of Modena. History knows no more about him, except that he had a wife and family. Of Niccolo da Pariana nothing has to be related. Ottavio da Trapani was caught at Milan, brought back to Lucca, and hanged there on June 13, 1604, after being torn with pincers. Massimiliano is said to have made his way to Flanders, where the Lucchese enjoyed many privileges, and where his family had probably hereditary connections.[193] Like all outlaws he lived in perpetual peril of assassination. Remorse and shame invaded him, especially when news arrived that the mistress, for whom he had risked all, was turning to a dissolute life (as we shall shortly read) in her monastery. His reason gave way; and, after twenty-two years of wandering, he returned to Lucca and was caught. Instead of executing the capital sentence which had been pronounced upon him, the Signory consigned him to perpetual prison in the tower of Viareggio, which was then an insalubrious and fever-stricken village on the coast. Here, walled up in a little room, alone, deprived of light and air and physical decency, he remained forgotten for ten years from 1615 to 1625. At the latter date report was made that he had refused food for three days and was suffering from a dangerous hemorrhage. When the authorities proposed to break the wall of his dungeon and send a priest and surgeon to relieve him, he declared that he would kill himself if they intruded on his misery. Nothing more was heard of him until 1629, when he was again reported to be at the point of death. This time he requested the assistance of a priest; and it is probable that he then died at the age of sixty-nine, having survived the other actors in this tragedy, and expiated the passion of his youth by life-long sufferings.
When we return to Sister Umilia, and inquire how the years had worn with her, a new chapter in the story opens. In 1606 she was still cloistered in S. Chiara, which indeed remained her home until her death. She had now reached the age of thirty-four. Suspicion meanwhile fell upon the conduct of the nuns of S. Chiara; and on January 9, in that year, a rope-ladder was discovered hanging from the garden wall of the convent. Upon inquiry, it appeared that certain men were in the habit of entering the house and holding secret correspondence with the sisters. Among these the most notorious were Piero Passari, a painter, infamous for vulgar profligacy, and a young nobleman of Lucca, Tommaso Samminiati. Both of them contrived to evade justice, and were proclaimed, as usual, outlaws. In the further course of investigation the strongest proofs were brought to light, from which it appeared that the chief promoter of these scandals was a man of high position in the state, advanced in years, married to a second wife, and holding office of trust as Protector of the Nunnery of S. Chiara. He was named Giovanbattista Dati, and represented an ancient Lucchese family mentioned by Dante. While Dati carried on his own intrigue with Sister Cherubina Mei, he did his best to encourage the painter in promiscuous debauchery, and to foster the passion which Samminiati entertained for Sister Umilia Malpigli. Dati was taken prisoner and banished for life to the island of Sardinia; but his papers fell into the hands of the Signory, who extracted from them the evidence which follows, touching Umilia and Samminiati. This young man was ten years her junior; yet the quiet life of the cloister had preserved Umilia's beauty, and she was still capable of inspiring enthusiastic adoration. This transpires in the letters which Samminiati addressed to her through Dati from his asylum in Venice. They reveal, says Signor Bonghi, a strange confusion of madness, crime, and love.[194]
Their style is that of a delirious rhetorician. One might fancy they had been composed as exercises, except for certain traits which mark the frenzy of genuine exaltation. Threats, imprecations, and blasphemies alternate with prayers, vows of fidelity and reminiscences of past delights in love. Samminiati bends before 'his lady' in an attitude of respectful homage, offering upon his knees the service of awe-struck devotion. At one time he calls her 'his most beauteous angel,' at another 'his most lovely and adored enchantress.' He does not conceal his firm belief that she has laid him under some spell of sorcery; but entreats her to have mercy and to liberate him, reminding her how a certain Florentine lady restored Giovan Lorenzo Malpigli to health after keeping him in magic bondage till his life was in danger.[195] Then he swears unalterable fealty; heaven and fortune shall not change his love. It is untrue that at Florence, or at Venice, he has cast one glance on any other woman. Let lightning strike him, if he deserts Umilia. But she has caused him jealousy by stooping to a base amour. To this point he returns with some persistence. Then he entreats her to send him her portrait, painted in the character of S. Ursula. At another time he gossips about the nuns, forwarding messages, alluding to their several love-affairs, and condoling with them on the loss of a compliant confessor. This was a priest, who, when the indescribable corruptions of S. Chiara had been clearly proved, calmly remarked that there was no reason to make such a fuss—they were only affairs of gentlefolk, cose di gentilhuomini. The rival of whom Samminiati was jealous seems to have been the painter Pietro, who held the key to all the scandals of the convent in his hand. Umilia, Dati, and Samminiati at last agreed 'to rid their neighborhood of that pest.' The man had escaped to Rovigo, whither Samminiati repaired from Venice, 'attended by two good fellows thoroughly acquainted with the district.'
But Pietro got away to Ferrara, his enemy following and again missing him. Samminiati writes that he is resolved to hunt 'that rascal' out, and make an end of him. Meanwhile Umilia is commissioned to do for Calidonia Burlamacchi, a nun who had withdrawn from the company of her guilty sisters, and knew too many of their secrets. Samminiati sends a white powder, and a little phial containing a liquid, both of which, he informs Umilia, are potent poisons, with instructions how to use them and how to get Calidonia to swallow the ingredients. Then 'if the devil does not help her, she will pass from this life in half a night's time, and without the slightest sign of violence.'
It may be imagined what disturbance was caused in the General Council by the reading of this correspondence. Nearly all the noble families of Lucca were connected by ties of blood or marriage with one or other of the culprits; and when the relatives of the accused had been excluded from the session, only sixty members were left to debate on further measures. I will briefly relate what happened to the three outlaws. Venice refused to give up Samminiati at the request of the Lucchese, saying that 'the Republic of S. Mark would not initiate a course of action prejudicial to the hospitality which every sort of person was wont to enjoy there.' But the young man was banished to Candia, whither he obediently retired. Pietro, the painter, was eventually permitted to return to the territory but not the town of Lucca. Dati surrounded himself with armed men, as was the custom of rich criminals on whose head a price was set. After wandering some time, he submitted, and took up his abode in Sardinia, whence he afterwards removed, by permission of the Signory, to France. There he died. With regard to the nuns, it seemed at first that the ends of justice would be defeated through the jealousies which divided the civil and ecclesiastical authorities in Lucca. The Bishop was absent, and his Vicar refused to institute a criminal process. Umilia remained at large in the convent, and even began a new intrigue with one Simo Menocchi. At last, in 1609, the Vicar prepared his indictment against the guilty nuns, and forwarded it to Rome. Their sentence was as follows: Sister Orizia condemned to incarceration for life, and loss of all her privileges; Sister Umilia, to the same penalties for a term of seven years; Sisters Paola, Cherubina, and Dionea, received a lighter punishment. Orizia, it may be mentioned, had written a letter with her own blood to some lover; but nothing leads us to suppose that she was equally guilty with Umilia, who had entered into the plot to poison Sister Calidonia.
Umilia was duly immured, and bore her punishment until the year 1616, at which time the sentence expired. But she was not released for another two years; for she persistently refused to humble herself, or to request that liberation as a grace which was her due in justice. Nor would she submit to the shame of being seen about the convent without her monastic habit. Finally, in 1618, she obtained freedom and restoration to her privileges as a nun of S. Chiara. It may be added, as a last remark, that, when the convent was being set to rights, Umilia's portrait in the character of S. Ursula was ordered to be destroyed, or rendered fit for devout uses by alterations. Any nun who kept it in her cell incurred the penalty of excommunication. In what year Umilia died remains unknown.
Shifting the scene to Rome, we light upon a group of notable misdeeds enacted in the last half of the sixteenth century, each of which is well calculated to illustrate the conditions of society and manners at that epoch. It may be well to begin with the Cenci tragedy. In Shelley's powerful drama, in Guerrazzi's tedious novel, and Scolari's digest, the legend of Beatrice Cenci has long appealed to modern sympathy. The real facts, extracted from legal documents and public registers, reduce its poetry of horror to comparatively squalid prose.[196] Yet, shorn of romantic glamour, the bare history speaks significantly to a student of Italian customs. Monsignore Cristoforo Cenci, who died about the year 1562, was in holy orders, yet not a priest. One of the clerks of the Apostolic Camera, a Canon of S. Peter's, the titular incumbent of a Roman parish, and an occupant of minor offices about the Papal Court and Curia, he represented an epicene species, neither churchman nor layman, which the circumstances of ecclesiastical sovereignty rendered indispensable. Cristoforo belonged to a good family among that secondary Roman aristocracy which ranked beneath the princely feudatories and the Papal bastards. He accumulated large sums of money by maladministration of his official trusts, inherited the estates of two uncles, and bequeathed a colossal fortune to his son Francesco. This youth was the offspring of an illicit connection carried on between Monsignore Cenci and Beatrice Amias during the lifetime of that lady's husband. Upon the death of the husband the Monsignore obtained dispensation from his orders, married Beatrice, and legitimated his son, the inheritor of so much wealth. Francesco was born in 1549, and had therefore reached the age of thirteen when his father died. His mother, Beatrice, soon contracted a third matrimonial union; but during her guardianship of the boy she appeared before the courts, accused of having stolen clothing from his tutor's wardrobe.
Francesco Cenci disbursed a sum of 33,000 crowns to various public offices, in order to be allowed to enter unmolested into the enjoyment of his father's gains: 3,800 crowns of this sum went to the Chapter of S. Peter's.[197] He showed a certain precocity; for at the age of fourteen he owned an illegitimate child, and was accused of violence to domestics. In 1563 his family married him to Ersilia, a daughter of the noble Santa Croce house, who brought him a fair dowry. Francesco lived for twenty-one years with this lady, by whom he had twelve children. Upon her death he remained a widower for nine years, and in 1593 he married Lucrezia Petroni, widow of a Roman called Velli. Francesco's conduct during his first marriage was not without blame. Twice, at least, he had to pay fines for acts of brutality to servants; and once he was prosecuted for an attempt to murder a cousin, also named Francesco Cenci. On another occasion we find him outlawed from the States of the Church. Yet these offences were but peccadilloes in a wealthy Roman baron; and Francesco used to boast that, with money in his purse, he had no dread of justice. After the death of his wife Ersilia, his behavior grew more irregular. Three times between 1591 and 1594 he was sued for violent attacks on servants; and in February of the latter year he remained six months in prison on multiplied charges of unnatural vice. There was nothing even here to single Francesco Cenci out from other nobles of his age.[198] Scarcely a week passed in Rome without some affair of the sort involving outrage, being brought before the judges. Cardinals, prelates, princes, professional men and people of the lowest rank were alike implicated. The only difference between the culprits was that the rich bought themselves off, while the destitute were burned. Eleven poor Spaniards and Portuguese were sent to the stake in 1578 for an offence which Francesco Cenci compounded in 1594 by the payment of 100,000 crowns. After this warning and the loss of so much money, he grew more circumspect, married his second wife Lucrezia, and settled down to rule his family. His sons caused him considerable anxiety. Giacomo, the eldest, married against his father's will, and supported himself by forging obligations and raising money. Francesco's displeasure showed itself in several lawsuits, one of which accused Giacomo of having plotted against his life. The second son, Cristoforo, was assassinated by Paolo Bruno, a Corsican, in the prosecution of a love affair with the wife of a Trasteverine fisherman. The third son, Rocco, spent his time in street adventures, and on one occasion laid his hands on all the plate and portable property that he could carry off from his father's house. This young ruffian, less than twenty years of age, found a devoted friend in Monsignore Querro, a cousin of the family well placed at court, who assisted him in the burglary of the Cenci palace. Rocco was killed by Amilcare Orsini, a bastard of the Count of Pitigliano, in a brawl at night. The young men met, Cenci attended by three armed servants, Orsini by two. A single pass of rapiers, in which Rocco was pierced through the right eye, ended the affair.
In addition to his vindictive persecution of his worthless eldest son, Francesco Cenci behaved with undue strictness to the younger, allowing them less money than befitted their station and treating them with a severity which contrasted comically with his own loose habits. The legend which represents him as an exceptionally wicked man, cruel for cruelty's sake and devoid of natural affection, receives some color from the facts. Yet these alone are not sufficient to justify its darker hues, while they amply prove that Francesco's children gave him grievous provocation. The discontents of this ill-governed family matured into rebellion; and in 1598 it was decided on removing the old Cenci by murder. His second wife Lucrezia, his eldest son Giacomo, his daughter Beatrice, and the youngest son Bernardo, were implicated in the crime. It was successfully carried out at the Rocca di Petrella in the Abruzzi on the night of September 9. Two hired bravi, Olimpio Calvetti and Marzio Catalani, entered the old man's bedroom, drove a nail into his head, and flung the corpse out from a gallery, whence it was alleged that he had fallen by accident. Six days after this assassination Giacomo and his brothers took out letters both at Rome and in the realm of Naples for the administration of their father's property; nor does suspicion seem for some time to have fallen upon them. It awoke at Petrella in November, the feudatory of which fief, Marzio Colonna, informed the government of Naples that proceedings ought to be taken against the Cenci and their cut-throats. Accordingly, on December 10, a ban was published against Olimpio and Marzio. Olimpio met his death at an inn door in a little village called Cantalice. Three desperate fellows, at the instigation of Giacomo de'Cenci and Monsignore Querro, surprised him there. But Marzio fell into the hands of justice, and his evidence caused the immediate arrest of the Cenci. It appears that they were tortured and that none of them denied the accusation; so that their advocates could only plead extenuating circumstances. To this fact may possibly be due the legend of Beatrice. In order to mitigate the guilt of parricide, Prospero Farinacci, who conducted her defense, established a theory of enormous cruelty and unspeakable outrages committed on her person by her father. With the same object in view, he tried to make out that Bernardo was half-witted. There is quite sufficient extant evidence to show that Bernardo was a young man of average intelligence; and with regard to Beatrice, nothing now remains to corroborate Farinaccio's hypothesis of incest. She was not a girl of sixteen, as the legend runs, but a woman of twenty-two;[199] and the codicils to her will render it nearly certain that she had given birth to an illegitimate son, for whose maintenance she made elaborate and secret provisions. That the picture ascribed to Guido Reni in the Barberini palace is not a portrait of Beatrice in prison, appears sufficiently proved. Guido did not come to Rome until 1608, nine years after her death; and catalogues of the Barberini gallery, compiled in 1604 and 1623, contain no mention either of a painting by Guido or of Beatrice's portrait. The Cenci were lodged successively in the prisons of Torre di Nona, Savelli, and S. Angelo. They occupied wholesome apartments and were allowed the attendance of their own domestics. That their food was no scanty dungeon fare appears from the menus of dinners and suppers supplied to them, which include fish, flesh, fruit salad, and snow to cool the water. In spite of powerful influence at court, Clement VIII. at last resolved to exercise strict justice on the Cenci. He was brought to this decision by a matricide perpetrated in cold blood at Subiaco, on September 5, 1599. Paolo di S. Croce, a relative of the Cenci, murdered his mother Costanza in her bed, with the view of obtaining property over which she had control. The sentence issued a few days after this event. Giacomo was condemned to be torn to pieces by red hot pincers, and finished with a coup de grâce from the hangman's hammer. Lucrezia and Beatrice received the slighter sentence of decapitation; while Bernardo, in consideration of his youth, was let off with the penalty of being present at the execution of his kinsfolk, after which he was to be imprisoned for a year and then sent to the galleys for life. Their property was confiscated to the Camera Apostolica. These punishments were carried out.[200] But Bernardo, after working at Cività Vecchia until 1606, obtained release and lived in banishment till his death in 1627. Monsignor Querro, for his connivance in the whole affair, was banished to the island of Malta, whence he returned at some date before the year 1633 to Rome, having expiated his guilt by long and painful exile. In this abstract of the Cenci tragedy, I have followed the documents published by Signor Bertolotti. They are at many points in startling contradiction to the legend, which is founded on MS. accounts compiled at no distant period after the events. One of these was translated by Shelley; another, differing in some particulars, was translated by De Stendhal. Both agree in painting that lurid portrait of Francesco Cenci which Shelley has animated with the force of a great dramatist.[201] Unluckily, no copy of the legal instructions upon which the trial was conducted is now extant. In the absence of this all-important source of information, it would be unsafe to adopt Bertolotti's argument, that the legend calumniates Francesco in order to exculpate Beatrice, without some reservation. There is room for the belief that facts adduced in evidence may have partly justified the prevalent opinion of Beatrice's infamous persecution by her father.
The tragedy of the Cenci, about which so much has been written in consequence of the supposed part taken in it by Beatrice, seems to me common-place compared with that of the Massimi.[202]
Whether this family really descended from the Roman Fabii matters but little. In the sixteenth century they ranked, as they still rank, among the proudest nobles of the Eternal City. Lelio, the head of the house, had six stalwart sons by his first wife, Girolama Savelli. They were conspicuous for their gigantic stature and herculean strength. After their mother's death in 1571, their father became enamoured of a woman inferior at all points, in birth, breeding, and antecedents, to a person of his quality. She was a certain Eufrosina, who had been married to a man called Corberio. The great Marc Antonio Colonna murdered this husband, and brought the wife to Rome as his own mistress. Lelio Massimo committed the grand error of so loving her, after she had served Colonna's purpose, that he married her. This was an insult to the honor of the house, which his sons could not or would not bear. On the night of her wedding, in 1585, they refused to pay her their respects; and on the next morning, five of them entered her apartments and shot her dead. Only one of the six sons, Pompeo Massimo, bore no share in this assassination. Him, the father, Lelio, blessed; but he solemnly cursed the other five. After the lapse of a few weeks, he followed his wife to the grave with a broken heart, leaving this imprecation unrecalled. Pompeo grew up to continue the great line of Massimo. But disaster fell on each of his five brothers, the flower of Roman youth, exulting in their blood, and insolence, and vigor.—The first of them, Ottavio, was killed by a cannon-ball at sea in honorable combat with the Turk. Another, Girolamo, who sought refuge in France, was shot down in an ambuscade while pursuing his amours with a gentle lady. A third, Alessandro, died under arms before Paris in the troops of General Farnese. A fourth, Luca, was imprisoned at Rome for his share of the step-mother's murder, but was released on the plea that he had avenged the wounded honor of his race. He died, however, poisoned by his own brother, Marcantonio, in 1599.[203] Marcantonio was arrested on suspicion and imprisoned in Torre di Nona, where he confessed his guilt. He was shortly afterwards beheaded on the little square before the bridge of S. Angelo.
Next in order, I shall take the story of Vittoria Accoramboni. It has been often told already,[204] yet it combines so many points of interest bearing upon the social life of the Italians in my period, that to omit it would be to sacrifice the most important document bearing on the matter of this chapter. As the Signora di Monza and Lucrezia Buonvisi help us to understand the secret history of families and convents, so Vittoria Accoramboni introduces us to that of courts.
It will be noticed how the same machinery of lawless nobles and profligate bravi, acting in concert with bold women, is brought into play throughout the tragedies which form the substance of our present inquiry.
Vittoria was born in 1557, of a noble but impoverished family, at Gubbio among the hills of Umbria. Her biographers are rapturous in their praises of her beauty, grace, and exceeding charm of manner. Not only was her person most lovely, but her mind shone at first with all the amiable luster of a modest, innocent, and winning youth. Her father, Claudio Accoramboni, removed to Rome, where his numerous children were brought up under the care of their mother, Tarquinia, an ambitious woman, bent on rehabilitating the decayed honors of her house. Here Vittoria in early girlhood soon became the fashion. She exercised an irresistible influence over all who saw her, and many were the offers of marriage she refused. At length a suitor appeared whose condition and connection with the Roman ecclesiastical nobility rendered him acceptable in the eyes of the Accoramboni. Francesco Peretti was welcomed as the successful candidate for Vittoria's hand. His mother, Camilla, was sister to Felice, Cardinal of Montalto; and her son, Francesco Mignucci, had changed both of his names to Felice Peretti in compliment to this illustrious relative.[205]
It was the nephew, then, of the future Sixtus V., that Vittoria Accoramboni married on June 28, 1573. For a short while the young couple lived happily together. According to some accounts of their married life, the bride secured the favor of her powerful uncle-in-law, who indulged her costly fancies to the full. It is, however, more probable that the Cardinal Montalto treated her follies with a grudging parsimony; for we soon find the Peretti household hopelessly involved in debt. Discord, too, arose between Vittoria and her husband on the score of levity in her behavior; and it was rumored that even during the brief space of their union she had proved a faithless wife. Yet she contrived to keep Francesco's confidence, and it is certain that her family profited by their connection with the Peretti. Of her six brothers, Mario, the eldest, was a favorite courtier of the great Cardinal d'Este. Ottavio was in orders, and through Montalto's influence obtained the See of Fossombrone. The same eminent protector placed Scipione in the service of the Cardinal Sforza. Camillo, famous for his beauty and his courage, followed the fortunes of Filibert of Savoy, and died in France. Flaminio was still a boy, dependent, as the sequel of this story shows, upon his sister's destiny.
Of Marcello, the second in age and most important in the action of this tragedy, it is needful to speak with more particularity. He was young, and, like the rest of his breed, singularly handsome—so handsome, indeed, that he is said to have gained an infamous ascendency over the great Duke of Bracciano, whose privy chamberlain he had become. Marcello was an outlaw for the murder of Matteo Pallavicino, the brother of the Cardinal of that name. This did not, however, prevent the chief of the Orsini house from making him his favorite and confidential friend. Marcello, who seems to have realized in actual life the worst vices of those Roman courtiers described for us by Aretino, very soon conceived the plan of exalting his own fortunes by trading on his sister's beauty. He worked upon the Duke of Bracciano's mind so cleverly that he brought this haughty prince to the point of an insane passion for Peretti's young wife; and meanwhile he so contrived to inflame the ambition of Vittoria and her mother, Tarquinia, that both were prepared to dare the worst of crimes in expectation of a dukedom. The game was a difficult one to play. Not only had Francesco Peretti first to be murdered, but the inequality of birth and wealth and station between Vittoria and the Duke of Bracciano rendered a marriage almost impossible. It was also an affair of delicacy to stimulate without satisfying the Duke s passion. Yet Marcello did not despair. The stakes were high enough to justify great risks; and all he put in peril was his sister's honor, the fame of the Accoramboni, and the favor of Montalto. Vittoria, for her part, trusted in her power to ensnare and secure the noble prey both had in view.
Paolo Giordano Orsini, born about the year 1637, was reigning Duke of Bracciano. Among Italian princes he ranked almost upon a par with the Dukes of Urbino; and his family, by its alliances, was more illustrious than any of that time in Italy. He was a man of gigantic stature, prodigious corpulence, and marked personal daring; agreeable in manners, but subject to uncontrollable fits of passion, and incapable of self-restraint when crossed in any whim or fancy. Upon the habit of his body it is needful to insist, in order that the part he played in this tragedy of intrigue, crime, and passion may be well defined. He found it difficult to procure a charger equal to his weight, and he was so fat that a special dispensation relieved him from the duty of genuflexion in the Papal presence. Though lord of a large territory, yielding princely revenues, he labored under heavy debts; for no great noble of the period lived more splendidly, with less regard for his finances. In the politics of that age and country, Paolo Giordano leaned towards France. Yet he was a grandee of Spain, and had played a distinguished part in the battle of Lepanto. Now, the Duke of Bracciano was a widower. He had been married in 1553 to Isabella de'Medici, daughter of the Grand, Duke Cosimo, sister of Francesco, Bianca Capello's lover, and of the Cardinal Ferdinando. Suspicion of adultery with Troilo Orsini had fallen on Isabella; and her husband, with the full concurrence of her brothers, removed her in 1576 from this world by poison.[206] No one thought the worse of Bracciano for this murder of his wife. In those days of abandoned vice and intricate villany, certain points of honor were maintained with scrupulous fidelity. A wife's adultery was enough to justify the most savage and licentious husband in an act of semi-judicial vengeance; and the shame she brought upon his head was shared by the members of her own house, so that they stood by, consenting to her death. Isabella, it may be said, left one son, Virginio, who became, in due time, Duke of Bracciano.
It appears that in the year 1581, four years after Vittoria's marriage, the Duke of Bracciano satisfied Marcello of his intention to make her his wife, and of his willingness to countenance Francesco Peretti's murder. Marcello, feeling sure of his game, now introduced the Duke in private to his sister, and induced her to overcome any natural repugnance she may have felt for the unwieldy and gross lover. Having reached this point, it was imperative to push matters quickly on toward matrimony.
But how should the unfortunate Francesco be entrapped? They caught him in a snare of peculiar atrocity, by working on the kindly feelings which his love for Vittoria had caused him to extend to all the Accoramboni. Marcello, the outlaw, was her favorite brother, and Marcello at that time lay in hiding, under the suspicion of more than ordinary crime, beyond the walls of Rome. Late in the evening of April 18, while the Peretti family were retiring to bed, a messenger from Marcello arrived, entreating Francesco to repair at once to Monte Cavallo. Marcello had affairs of the utmost importance to communicate, and begged his brother-in-law not to fail him at a grievous pinch. The letter containing this request was borne by one Dominico d'Aquaviva, alias Il Mancino, a confederate of Vittoria's waiting-maid. This fellow, like Marcello, was an outlaw; but when he ventured into Rome he frequented Peretti's house, and he had made himself familiar with its master as a trusty bravo. Neither in the message, therefore, nor in the messenger was there much to rouse suspicion. The time, indeed, was oddly chosen, and Marcello had never made a similar appeal on any previous occasion. Yet his necessities might surely have obliged him to demand some more than ordinary favor from a brother. Francesco immediately made himself ready to start out, armed only with his sword and attended by a single servant. It was in vain that his wife and his mother reminded him of the dangers of the night, the loneliness of Monte Cavallo, its ruinous palaces and robber-haunted caves. He was resolved to undertake the adventure, and went forth, never to return. As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with three harquebusses. His body was afterwards found on Monte Cavallo, stabbed through and through, without a trace that could identify the murderers. Only, in the course of subsequent investigations, Il Mancino (February 24, 1582) made the following statements:—That Vittoria's mother, assisted by the waiting woman, had planned the trap; that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of Bracciano, two of the Duke's men, had despatched the victim. Marcello himself, it seems, had come from Bracciano to conduct the whole affair. Suspicion fell immediately upon Vittoria and her kindred, together with the Duke of Bracciano; nor was this diminished when the Accoramboni, fearing the pursuit of justice, took refuge in a villa of the Duke's at Magnanapoli a few days after the murder.
A cardinal's nephew, even in those troublous times, was not killed without some noise being made about the matter. Accordingly, Pope Gregory XIII. began to take measures for discovering the authors of the crime. Strange to say, however, the Cardinal Montalto, notwithstanding the great love he was known to bear his nephew, begged that the investigation might be dropped. The coolness with which he first received the news of Francesco Peretti's death, the dissimulation with which he met the Pope's expression of sympathy in a full consistory, his reserve while greeting friends on ceremonial visits of condolence, and, more than all, the self-restraint he showed in the presence of the Duke of Bracciano, impressed the society of Rome with the belief that he was of a singularly moderate and patient temper. It was thought that the man who could so tamely submit to his nephew's murder, and suspend the arm of justice when already raised for vengeance, must prove a mild and indulgent ruler. When, therefore, in the fifth year after this event, Montalto was elected Pope, men ascribed his elevation in no small measure to his conduct at the present crisis. Some, indeed, attributed his extraordinary moderation and self-control to the right cause. 'Veramente costui è un gran frate!' was Gregory's remark at the close of the consistory when Montalto begged him to let the matter of Peretti's murder rest. 'Of a truth, that fellow is a consummate hypocrite!' How accurate this judgment was, appeared when Sixtus V. assumed the reins of power. The priest who, as monk and cardinal, had smiled on Bracciano, though he knew him to be his nephew's assassin, now, as Pontiff and sovereign, bade the chief of the Orsini purge his palace and dominions of the scoundrels he was wont to harbor, adding significantly, that if the Cardinal Felice Peretti forgave what had been done against him in a private station, the same man would exact uttermost ven geance for disobedience to the will of Sixtus. The Duke of Bracciano judged it best, after that warning, to withdraw from Rome.
Francesco Peretti had been murdered on April 16, 1581. Sixtus V. was proclaimed on April 24, 1585. In this interval Vittoria underwent a series of extraordinary perils and adventures. First of all, she had been secretly married to the Duke in his gardens of Magnanapoli at the end of April 1581. That is to say, Marcello and she secured their prize, as well as they were able, the moment after Francesco had been removed by murder. But no sooner had the marriage become known, than the Pope, moved by the scandal it created, no less than by the urgent instance of the Orsini and Medici, declared it void. After some while spent in vain resistance, Bracciano submitted, and sent Vittoria back to her father's house. By an order issued under Gregory's own hand, she was next removed to the prison of Corte Savella, thence to the monastery of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and finally to the Castle of S. Angelo. Here at the end of December 1581, she was put on her trial for the murder of her first husband. In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honors due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front. In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt of a letter in the Duke's own handwriting, formally renouncing his marriage. It was only by a lucky accident that she was prevented on this occasion from committing suicide. The Papal court meanwhile kept urging her either to retire to a monastery or to accept another husband. She firmly refused to embrace the religious life, and declared that she was already lawfully united to a living husband, the Duke of Bracciano. It seemed impossible to deal with her; and at last, on November 8, she was released from prison under the condition of retirement to Gubbio. The Duke had lulled his enemies to rest by the pretense of yielding to their wishes. But Marcello was continually beside him at Bracciano, where we read of a mysterious Greek enchantress whom he hired to brew love-philters for the furtherance of his ambitious plots. Whether Bracciano was stimulated by the brother's arguments or by the witch's potions need not be too curiously questioned. But it seems in any case certain that absence inflamed his passion instead of cooling it.
Accordingly, in September 1583, under the excuse of a pilgrimage to Loreto, he contrived to meet Vittoria at Trevi, whence he carried her in triumph to Bracciano. Here he openly acknowledged her as his wife, installing her with all the splendor due to a sovereign duchess. On October 10 following, he once more performed the marriage ceremony in the principal church of his fief; and in the January of 1584 he brought her openly to Rome. This act of contumacy to the Pope, both as feudal superior and as Supreme Pontiff, roused all the former opposition to his marriage. Once more it was declared invalid. Once more the Duke pretended to give way. But at this juncture Gregory died; and while the conclave was sitting for the election of the new Pope, he resolved to take the law into his own hands, and to ratify his union with Vittoria by a third and public marriage in Rome. On the morning of April 24, 1585, their nuptials were accordingly once more solemnized in the Orsini palace. Just one hour after the ceremony, as appears from the marriage-register, the news arrived of Cardinal Montalto's election to the Papacy. Vittoria lost no time in paying her respects to Camilla, sister of the new Pope, her former mother-in-law. The Duke visited Sixtus V. in state to compliment him on his elevation. But the reception which both received proved that Rome was no safe place for them to live in. They consequently made up their minds for flight.
A chronic illness from which Bracciano had lately suffered furnished a sufficient pretext. This seems to have been something of the nature of a cancerous ulcer, which had to be treated by the application of raw meat to open sores. Such details are only excusable in the present narrative on the ground that Bracciano's disease considerably affects our moral judgment of the woman who could marry a man thus physically tainted, and with her hus band's blood upon his hands. At any rate, the Duke's lupa justified his trying what change of air, together with the sulphur waters of Abano, would do for him.
The Duke and Duchess arrived in safety at Venice, where they had engaged the Dandolo palace on the Zueca. There they only stayed a few days, removing to Padua, where they had hired palaces of the Foscari in the Arena and a house called De'Cavalli. At Salò, also, on the Lake of Garda, they provided themselves with fit dwellings for their princely state and their large retinues, intending to divide their time between the pleasures which the capital of luxury afforded and the simpler enjoyments of the most beautiful of the Italian lakes. But la gioia dei profani è un fumo passaggier. Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, died suddenly at Salò on November 10, 1585, leaving the young and beautiful Vittoria helpless among enemies. What was the cause of his death? It is not possible to give a clear and certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini family were all interested in his death. Anyhow, he had time to make a will in Vittoria's favor, leaving her large sums of money, jewels, goods, and houses—enough, in fact, to support her ducal dignity with splendor. His hereditary fiefs and honors passed by right to his only son, Virginio.
Vittoria, accompanied by her brother, Marcello, and the whole court of Bracciano, repaired at once to Padua, where she was soon after joined by Flaminio, and by the Prince Lodovico Orsini. Lodovico Orsini assumed the duty of settling Vittoria's affairs under her dead husband's will. In life he had been the duke's ally as well as relative. His family pride was deeply wounded by what seemed to him an ignoble, as it was certainly an unequal, marriage. He now showed himself the relentless enemy of the Duchess. Disputes arose between them as to certain details, which seem to have been legally decided in the widow's favor. On the night of December 22, however, forty men, disguised in black and fantastically tricked out to elude detection, surrounded her palace. Through the long galleries and chambers hung with arras, eight of them went, bearing torches, in search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers. Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their harquebusses. He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring for the night. When three of the assassins entered, she knelt before the crucifix, and there they stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds.
The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria and Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to Venice. Meanwhile it appears that both corpses were laid out in one open coffin for the people to contemplate. The palace and the church of the Eremitani, to which they had been removed, were crowded all through the following day with a vast concourse of the Paduans. Vittoria's dead body, pale yet sweet to look upon, the golden hair flowing around her marble shoulders, the red wound in her breast uncovered, the stately limbs arrayed in satin as she died, maddened the populace with its surpassing loveliness. 'Dentibus fremebant.' says the chronicler, when they beheld that gracious lady stiff in death. And of a truth, if her corpse was actually exposed in the chapel of the Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the spectacle must have been impressive. Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life. No wonder that the folk forgot her first husband's murder, her less than comely marriage to the second. It was enough for them that this flower of surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains in its bloom. Gathering in knots around the torches placed beside the corpse, they vowed vengeance against the Orsini; for suspicion, not unnaturally, fell on Prince Lodovico.
The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court of Padua. He entered their hall attended by forty armed men, responded haughtily to their questions and demanded free passage for his courier to Virginio Orsini, then at Florence. To this demand the court acceded; but the precaution of waylaying the courier and searching his person was very wisely taken. Besides some formal despatches which announced Vittoria's assassination, they found in this man's boot a compromising letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and asserting that Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their victim. Padua placed itself in a state of defense, and prepared to besiege the palace of Prince Lodovico, who also got himself in readiness for battle. Engines, culverins, and fire-brands were directed against the barricades which he had raised. The militia was called out and the Brenta was strongly guarded. Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had despatched the Avogadore, Aloisio Bragadin, with full power, to the scene of action. Lodovico Orsini, it may be mentioned, was in their service: and had not this affair intervened, he would in a few weeks have entered on his duties as Governor for Venice of Corfu.
The bombardment of Orsini's palace began on Christmas Day. Three of the Prince's men were killed in the first assault; and since the artillery brought to bear upon him threatened speedy ruin to the house and its inhabitants, he made up his mind to surrender. 'The Prince Luigi,' writes one chronicler of these events, 'walked attired in brown, his poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under his arm. The weapon being taken from him he leaned upon a balustrade, and began to trim his nails with a little pair of scissors he happened to find there.'
On the 27th he was strangled in prison by order of the Venetian Republic. His body was carried to be buried, according to his own will, in the church of S. Maria dell'Orto at Venice. Two of his followers were hanged next day. Fifteen were executed on the following Monday; two of these were quartered alive; one of them the Conte Paganello, who confessed to having slain Vittoria, had his left side probed with his own cruel dagger. Eight were condemned to the galleys, six to prison, and eleven were acquitted.
Thus ended this terrible affair, which brought, it is said, good credit, and renown to the lords of Venice through all nations of the civilized world. It only remains to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope's vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.
It was the custom of Italians in the 16th and 17th centuries to compose and circulate narratives of tragic or pathetic incidents in real life. They were intended to satisfy curiosity in an age when newspapers and law reports did not exist, and also to suit the taste of ladies and gentlemen versed in Boccaccio and Bandello. Resembling the London letters of our ancestors, they passed from hand to hand, rarely found their way into the printing office, and when they had performed their task were left to moulder in the dust of bookcases. The private archives of noble families abound in volumes of such tales, and some may still be found upon the shelves of public libraries. These MS. collections furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners. When checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness, inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts. The genius of the Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch, presided over their composition, adding intreccio to disconnected facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives, turning the heroes or the heroines of their adventures into saints, and blackening the faces of the villains. Yet these stories, pretending to be veracious and aiming at information no less than entertainment, present us with even a more vivid picture of customs than the Novelle. By their truthful touches of landscape and incident painting, by their unconscious revelation of contemporary sentiment in dialogue and ethical analysis of motives, they enable us to give form and substance to the drier details of the law-courts. One of these narratives I propose to condense from the transcript made by Henri Beyle, for the sake of the light it throws upon the tragedy of the Caraffa family.[207] It opens with an account of Paul IV.'s ascent to power and a description of his nephews. Don Giovanni, the eldest son of the Count of Montorio, was married to Violante de Cardona, sister of the Count Aliffe. Paul invested him with the Duchy of Palliano, which he wrested from Marc Antonio Colonna. Don Carlo, the second son, who had passed his life as a soldier, entered the Sacred College; and Don Antonio, the third, was created Marquis of Montebello. The cardinal, as prime minister, assumed the reins of government in Rome. The Duke of Palliano disposed of the Papal soldiery. The Marquis of Montebello, commanding the guard of the palace, excluded or admitted persons at his pleasure. Surrounded by these nephews, Paul saw only with their eyes, heard only what they whispered to him, and unwittingly lent his authority to their lawlessness. They exercised an unlimited tyranny in Rome, laying hands on property and abusing their position to gratify their lusts. No woman who had the misfortune to please them was safe; and the cells of convents were as little respected as the palaces of gentlefolk. To arrive at justice was impossible; for the three brothers commanded all avenues, civil, ecclesiastical, and military, by which the Pope could be approached.
Violante, Duchess of Palliano, was a young woman distinguished for her beauty no less than for her Spanish pride. She had received a thoroughly Italian education; could recite the sonnets of Petrarch and the stanzas of Ariosto by heart, and repeated the tales of Ser Giovanni and other novelists with an originality that lent new charm to their style.[208] Her court was a splendid one, frequented by noble youths and gentlewomen of the best blood in Naples. Two of these require particular notice: Diana Brancaccio, a relative of the Marchioness of Montebello; and Marcello Capecce, a young man of exceptional beauty. Diana was a woman of thirty years, hot-tempered, tawny-haired, devotedly in love with Domiziano Fornari, a squire of the Marchese di Montebello's household. Marcello had conceived one of those bizarre passions for the Duchess, in which an almost religious adoration was mingled with audacity, persistence, and aptitude for any crime. The character of his mistress gave him but little hope. Though profoundly wounded by her husband's infidelities, insulted in her pride by the presence of his wanton favorites under her own roof, and assailed by the importunities of the most brilliant profligates in Rome, she held a haughty course, above suspicion, free from taint or stain, Marcello could do nothing but sigh at a distance and watch his opportunity.
At this point, the narrator seems to sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of combining his chief characters in one intrigue.[209]
Though he assumes the tone of a novelist rather than a chronicler, there has hitherto been nothing but what corresponds to fact in his description of the Caraffa Cabal. He now explains their downfall; and opens the subject after this fashion. At the beginning of the year 1559, the Pope's confessor ventured to bring before his notice the scandalous behavior of the Papal nephews. Paul at first refused to credit this report. But an incident happened which convinced him of its truth. On the feast of the Circumcision—a circumstance which aggravated matters in the eyes of a strictly pious Pontiff—Andrea Lanfranchi, secretary to the Duke of Palliano, invited the Cardinal Caraffa to a banquet. One of the loveliest and most notorious courtesans of Rome, Martuccia, was also present; and it so happened that Marcello Capecce at this epoch believed he had more right to her favors than any other man in the capital. That night he sought her in her lodgings, pursued her up and down, and learned at last that she was supping with Lanfranchi and the Cardinal. Attended by armed men, he made his way to Lanfranchi's house, entered the banquet room, and ordered Martuccia to come away with him at once. The Cardinal, who was dressed in secular habit, rose, and, drawing his sword, protested against this high-handed proceeding. Martuccia, by favor of their host, was his partner that evening. Upon this, Marcello called his men; but when they recognized the Cardinal nephew, they refused to employ violence. In the course of the quarrel, Martuccia made her escape, followed by Marcello, Caraffa, and the company. There ensued a street-brawl between the young man and the Cardinal; but no blood was spilt, and the incident need have had but slight importance, if the Duke of Palliano had not thought it necessary to place Lanfranchi and Marcello under arrest. They were soon released, because it became evident that the chief scandal would fall upon the Cardinal, who had clearly been scuffling and crossing swords in a dispute about a common prostitute. The three Caraffa brothers resolved on hushing the affair up. But it was too late. The Pope heard something, which sufficed to confirm his confessor's warnings; and on January 27, he pronounced the famous sentence on his nephews. The Cardinal was banished to Cività Lavinia, the Duke to Soriano, the Marquis to Montebello. The Duchess took up her abode with her court in the little village of Gallese. It was here that the episode of her love and tragic end ensued.
Violante found herself almost alone in a simple village among mountains, half-way between Rome and Orvieto, surrounded indeed by lovely forest scenery, but deprived of all the luxuries and entertainments to which she was accustomed. Marcello and Diana were at her side, the one eager to pursue his hitherto hopeless suit, and the other to further it for her own profit. One day Marcello committed the apparent imprudence of avowing his passion. The Duchess rejected him with scorn, but disclosed the fact to Diana, who calculated that if she could contrive to compromise her mistress, she might herself be able to secure the end she had in view of marrying Domiziano. In the solitude of those long days of exile the waiting-woman returned again and again to the subject of Marcello's devotion, his beauty, his noble blood and his manifold good qualities. She arranged meetings in the woods between the Duchess and her lover, and played her cards so well that during the course of the fine summer weeks Violante yielded to Marcello. Diana now judged it wise to press her own suit forward with Domiziano. But this cold-blooded fellow knew that he was no fit match for a relative of the Mar chioness of Montebello. He felt, besides, but little sentiment for his fiery innamorata. Dreading the poignard of the Caraffas, if he should presume to marry her, he took the prudent course of slipping away in disguise from the port of Nettuno. Diana maddened by disappointment, flew to the conclusion that the Duchess had planned her lover's removal, and resolved to take a cruel revenge. The Duke of Palliano was residing at Soriano, only a few miles from Gallese. To bring him secret information of his wife's intrigue was a matter of no difficulty. At first he refused to believe her report. Had not Violante resisted the seductions of all Rome, and repelled the advances even of the Duke of Guise? At last she contrived to introduce him into the bedroom of the Duchess at a moment when Marcello was also there. The circumstances were not precisely indicative of guilt. The sun had only just gone down behind the hills; a maid was in attendance; and the Duchess lay in bed, penciling some memoranda. Yet they were sufficient to arouse the Duke's anger. He disarmed Marcello and removed him to the prisons of Soriano, leaving Violante under strict guard at Gallese.