[Footnote 199: De Stendhal's MS. authority says she was sixteen, Shelley's that she was twenty.]

[Footnote 200: De Stendhal's MS. describes how Giacomo was torn by pincers; Shelley's says that this part of the sentence was remitted.]



The Massimi.

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]

[Footnote 201: The author of De Stendhal's MS. professes to have known the old Cenci, and gives a definite description of his personal appearance.]

[Footnote 202: Litta supplies the facts related above.]

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.



Vittoria Accoramboni.

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.

[Footnote 203: This fratricide, concurring with the matricide of S. Croce, contributed to the rigor with which the Cenci parricide was punished in that year of Roman crimes.]

[Footnote 204: The White Devil, a tragedy by John Webster, London, 1612; De Stendhal's Chroniques et Nouvelles, Vittoria Accoramboni, Paris 1855; Vittoria Accoramboni, D. Gnoli, Firenze, 1870; Italian Byways, by J.A. Symonds, London, 1883. The greater part of follows above is extracted from my Italian Byways.]

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.

[Footnote 205: I find a Felice Peretti mentioned in the will of Giacomo Cenci condemned in 1597. But this was after the death of this Peretti, whom I shall continue to call Francesco.]

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.

[Footnote 206: The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair. At the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom. Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano's orders a few years afterwards.]

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 e 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 vengeance 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 husband'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 Salo, 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 e un fumo passaggier. Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, died suddenly at Salo 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.



The Duchess of Palliano.

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.

[Footnote 207: 'La Duchesse de Palliano,' in Chroniques et Nouvelles, De Stendhal (Henri Beyle).]

[Footnote 208: This touch shows what were then considered the accomplishments of a noble woman.]

At this point, the narrator seems to sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of combining his chief characters in one intrigue.[209]

[Footnote 209: It was a street-brawl, in which the Cardinal Monte played an indecent part, that finally aroused the anger of Paul IV. De Stendhal's MS. shifts the chief blame on to the shoulders of Cardinal Caraffa, who indeed appears to have been in the habit of keeping bad company.]

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 Civita 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 Marchioness 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.

The Duke of Palliano had no intention of proclaiming his jealousy or of suggesting his dishonor, until he had extracted complete proof. He therefore pretended to have arrested Marcello on the suspicion of an attempt to poison him. Some large toads, bought by the young man at a high price two or three months earlier, lent color to this accusation. Meanwhile the investigation was conducted as secretly as possible by the Duke in person, his brother-in-law Count Aliffe, and a certain Antonio Torando, with the sanction of the Podesta of Soriano. After examining several witnesses, they became convinced of Violante's guilt. Marcello was put to the torture, and eventually confessed. The Duke stabbed him to death with his own hands, and afterwards cut Diana's throat for her share in the business. Both bodies were thrown into the prison-sewer. Meanwhile Paul IV. had retained the young Cardinal, Alfonso Caraffa, son of the Marquis of Montebello, near his person. This prelate thought it right to inform his grand-uncle of the occurrences at Soriano. The Pope only answered: 'And the Duchess? What have they done with her?' Paul IV. died in August, and the Conclave, which ended in the election of Pius IV., was opened. During the important intrigues of that moment, Cardinal Alfonso found time to write to the Duke, imploring him not to leave so dark a stain upon his honor, but to exercise justice on a guilty wife. On August 28, 1559, the Duke sent the Count Aliffe, and Don Leonardo del Cardine, with a company of soldiers to Gallese. They told Violante that they had arrived to kill her, and offered her the offices of two Franciscan monks. Before her death, the Duchess repeatedly insisted on her innocence, and received the Sacrament from the hands of Friar Antonio of Pavia. The Count, her brother, then proceeded to her execution. She covered her eyes with a handkerchief, which she, with perfect sang froid, drew somewhat lower in order to shut his sight out. Then he adjusted the cord to her neck; but, finding that it would not exactly fit, he removed it and walked away. The Duchess raised the bandage from her face, and said: "Well! what are we about then?" He answered: "The cord was not quite right, and I am going to get another, in order that you may not suffer." When he returned to the room, he arranged the handkerchief again, fixed the cord, turned the wand in the knot behind her neck, and strangled her. The whole incident, on the part of the Duchess, passed in the tone of ordinary conversation. She died like a good Christian, frequently repeating the words Credo, Credo.

Contrary to the usual custom and opinion of the age, this murder of an erring wife and sister formed part of the accusations brought against the Duke of Palliano and Count Aliffe. It will be remembered that they were executed in Rome, together with the elder Cardinal Caraffa, during the pontificate of Pius IV.

Wife-Murders.

It would be difficult to give any adequate notion of the frequency of wife-murders at this epoch in the higher ranks of society. I will, however, mention a few, noticed by me in the course of study. Donna Pellegrina, daughter of Bianca Capello before her marriage with the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was killed at Bologna in 1598 by four masked assassins at the order of her husband, Count Ulisse Bentivoglio. She had been suspected or convicted of adultery; and the Court of Florence sent word to the Count, 'che essendo vero quanto scriveva, facesse quello che conveniva a cavaliere di honore.' In the light of open day, together with two of her gentlewomen and her coachman, she was cut to pieces and left on the road.[210] In 1690 at Naples Don Carlo Gesualdo, son of the Prince of Venosta, assassinated his wife and cousin Donna Maria d'Avalos, together with her lover, Fabricio Caraffa, Duke of Andri. This crime was committed in his palace by the husband, attended by a band of cut-throats.[211] In 1577, at Milan, Count Giovanni Borromeo, cousin of the Cardinal Federigo, stabbed his wife, the Countess Giulia Sanseverina, sister of the Contessa di Sala, at table, with three mortal wounds. A mere domestic squabble gave rise to this tragedy.[212] In 1598, in his villa of Zenzalino at Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, with the assistance of a bravo called Jacopo Lazzarini, killed his wife Anna, daughter of the poet Guarini. Her own brother Girolamo connived at the act and helped to facilitate its execution. She was accused—falsely, as it afterwards appeared from Girolamo's confession—of an improper intimacy with the Count Ercole Bevilacqua. I may add that Count Ercole Trotti's father, Alfonso, had murdered his own wife, Michela Granzena, in the same villa.[213]

[Footnote 210: Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 64.]

[Footnote 211: Ib. vol. ii. p. 162.]

[Footnote 212: Ib. vol. i. p. 343.]

The Medici.

The history of the Medicean family during the sixteenth century epitomizes the chief features of social morality upon which I have been dwelling in this chapter. It will be remembered that Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence, poisoned his cousin Ippolito, and was himself assassinated by his cousin Lorenzino. To the second of these crimes Cosimo, afterwards Grand Duke of Tuscany, owed the throne of Florence, on which, however, he was not secure until he had removed Lorenzino from this world by the poignard of a bravo. Cosimo maintained his authority by a system of espionage, remorseless persecution, and assassination, which gave color even to the most improbable of legends.[214]

[Footnote 213: I Guarini, Famiglia Nobile Ferrarese (Bologna, Romagnoli, 1870), pp. 83-87.]

[Footnote 214: In addition to the victims of his vengeance who perished by the poignard, he publicly executed in Florence forty-two political offenders.]

But it is not of him so much as of his children that I have to speak. Francesco, who reigned from 1564 till 1587, brought disgrace upon his line by marrying the infamous Bianca Capello, after authorizing the murder of her previous husband. Bianca, though incapable of bearing children, flattered her besotted paramour before this marriage by pretending to have borne a son. In reality, she had secured the co-operation of three women on the point of child-birth; and when one of these was delivered of a boy, she presented this infant to Francesco, who christened him Antonio de'Medici. Of the three mothers who served in this nefarious transaction, Bianca contrived to assassinate two, but not before one of the victims to her dread of exposure made full confession at the point of death. The third escaped. Another woman who had superintended the affair was shot between Florence and Bologna in the valleys of the Apennines. Yet after the manifestation of Bianca's imposture, the Duke continued to recognize Antonio as belonging to the Medicean family; and his successor was obliged to compel this young man to assume the Cross of Malta, in order to exclude his posterity from the line of princes.[215]

[Footnote 215: See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. pp.54-56, for Antonio's reception into the Order.]

The legend of Francesco's and Bianca's mysterious death is well known. The Duchess had engaged in fresh intrigues for palming off a spurious child upon her husband. These roused the suspicions of his brother Cardinal Ferdinando de'Medici, heir presumptive to the crown. An angry correspondence followed, ending in a reconciliation between the three princes. They met in the autumn of 1587 at the villa of Poggio a Cajano. Then the world was startled by the announcement that the Grand Duke had died of fever after a few days' illness, and that Bianca had almost immediately afterwards followed him to the grave. Ferdinand, on succeeding to the throne, refused her the interment suited to her rank, defaced her arms on public edifices, and for her name and titles in official documents substituted the words, 'la pessima Bianca.' What passed at Poggio a Cajano is not known. It was commonly believed in Italy that Bianca, meaning to poison the Cardinal at supper, had been frustrated in her designs by a blunder which made her husband the victim of this plot, and that she ended her own life in despair or fell a victim to the Cardinal's vengeance. This story is rejected both by Botta and Galluzzi; but Litta has given it a partial credence.[216] Two of Cosimo's sons died previously, in the year 1562, under circumstances which gave rise to similar malignant rumors. Don Garzia and the Cardinal Giovanni were hunting together in the Pisan marshes, when the latter expired after a short illness, and the former in a few days met with a like fate. Report ran that Don Garzia had stabbed his brother, and that Cosimo, in a fit of rage, ran him through the body with his own sword. In this case, although Litta attaches weight to the legend, the balance of evidence is strongly in favor of both brothers having been carried off by a pernicious fever contracted simultaneously during their hunting expedition.[217] Each instance serves however, to show in what an atmosphere of guilt the Medicean princes were enveloped. No one believed that they could die except by fraternal or paternal hands. And the authentic crimes of the family certainly justified this popular belief. I have already alluded to the murders of Ippolito, Alessandro, and Lorenzino. I have told how the Court of Florence sanctioned the assassination of Bianca's daughter by her husband at Bologna.[218] I must now proceed to relate the tragic tales of the princesses of the house.

Pietro de'Medici, a fifth of Cosimo's sons, had rendered himself notorious in Spain and Italy by forming a secret society for the most revolting debaucheries.[219] Yet he married the noble lady Eleonora di Toledo, related by blood to Cosimo's first wife. Neglected and outraged by her husband, she proved unfaithful, and Pietro hewed her in pieces with his own hands at Caffaggiolo. Isabella de'Medici, daughter of Cosimo, was married to the Duke of Bracciano. Educated in the empoisoned atmosphere of Florence, she, like Eleonora di Toledo, yielded herself to fashionable profligacy, and was strangled by her husband at Cerretto.[220]

[Footnote 216: I refer, of course, to Galluzzi's Storia del Gran Ducato, vol. iv. pp. 241-244. Botta's Storia d'Italia, Book xiv., and Litta's Famiglie Celebri under the pedigree of Medici.]

[Footnote 217: See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iii. p, 25, and Botta, op. cit. Book xii.]

[Footnote 218: See above, p. 381.]

[Footnote 219: Litta may be consulted for details; also Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. v. p. 174.]

[Footnote 220: It maybe worth mentioning that Virginio Orsini, Bracciano's son and heir, married Donna Flavia, grand niece of Sixtus V., and consequently related to the man his father murdered in order to possess Vittoria Accoramboni. See Mutinelli, Storia Arcana, vol. ii. p. 72.]

Both of these murders took place in 1576. Isabella's death, as I have elsewhere related, opened the way for the Duke of Bracciano's marriage with Vittoria Accoramboni, which had been prepared by the assassination of her first husband, and which led to her own murder at Padua.[221] Another of Cosimo's daughters, Lucrezia de'Medici, became Duchess of Ferrara, fell under a suspicion of infidelity, and was possibly removed by poison in 1561.[222] The last of his sons whom I have to mention, Don Giovanni, married a dissolute woman of low birth called Livia, and disgraced the name of Medici by the unprincely follies of his life. Eleonora de'Medici, third of his daughters, introduces a comic element into these funereal records. She was affianced to Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir of the Duchy of Mantua. But suspicions, arising out of the circumstances of his divorce from a former wife, obliged him to prove his marital capacity before the completion of the contract. This he did at Venice, before a witness, upon the person of a virgin selected for the experiment.[223] Maria de'Medici, the only child of Duke Francesco, became Queen of France.

[Footnote 221: See above, pp. 361-369.]

[Footnote 222: Galluzzi, vol. iii. p. 5, says that she died of a putrid fever. Litta again inclines to the probability of poison. But this must counted among the doubtful cases.]

[Footnote 223: See Galluzzi, op. cit. vol. iv. pp. 195-197, for the account of a transaction which throws curious light upon the customs of the age. It was only stipulated that the trial should not take place upon a Friday. Otherwise, the highest ecclesiastics gave it their full approval.] The history of her amours with Concini forms an episode in French annals.

If now we eliminate the deaths of Don Garcia, Cardinal Giovanni, Duke Francesco, Bianca Capello, and Lucrezia de'Medici, as doubtful, there will still remain the murders of Cardinal Ippolito, Duke Alessandro, Lorenzino de'Medici, Pietro Bonaventuri (Bianca's husband), Pellegrina Bentivoglio (Bianca's daughter), Eleonora di Toledo, Francesco Casi (Eleonora's lover), the Duchess of Bracciano, Troilo Orsini (lover of this Duchess), Felice Peretti (husband of Vittoria Accoramboni), and Vittoria Accoramboni—eleven murders, all occurring between 1535 and 1585, an exact half century, in a single princely family and its immediate connections. The majority of these crimes, that is to say seven, had their origin in lawless passion.[224]

[Footnote 224: I have told the stories in this chapter as dryly as I could. Yet it would be interesting to analyze the fascination they exercised over our Elizabethan playwrights, some of whose Italian tragedies handle the material with penetrative imagination. For the English mode of interpreting southern passions see my Italian Byways, pp. 142 et seq., and a brilliant essay in Vernon Lee's Euphorion.]



CHAPTER VI.

SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS: PART II.

Tales illustrative of Bravi and Banditti—Cecco Bibboni—Ambrogio Tremazzi—Lodovico dall'Armi—Brigandage—Piracy—Plagues—The Plagues of Milan, Venice, Piedmont—Persecution of the Untori—Moral State of the Proletariate—Witchcraft—Its Italian Features—History of Giacomo Centini.

The stories related in the foregoing chapter abundantly demonstrate the close connection between the aristocracy and their accomplices—bravos and bandits. But it still remains to consider this connection from the professional murderer's own point of view. And for this purpose, I will now make use of two documents vividly illustrative of the habits, sentiments, and social status of men who undertook to speculate in bloodshed for reward. They are both autobiographical; and both relate tragedies which occupied the attention of all Italy.

Cecco Bibboni.

The first of these documents is the report made by Cecco Bibboni concerning his method adopted for the murder of Lorenzino de'Medici at Venice in 1546. Lorenzino, by the help of a bravo called Scoroncolo, had assassinated his cousin Alessandro, Duke of Florence, in 1537. After accomplishing this deed, which gained for him the name of Brutus, he escaped from the city; and a distant relative of the murdered and the murderer, Cosimo de'Medici, was chosen Duke in Alessandro's stead. One of the first acts of his reign was to publish a ban of outlawry against Lorenzino. His portrait was painted according to old Tuscan usage head downwards, and suspended by one foot, upon the wall of Alessandro's fortress. His house was cut in twain from roof to pavement, and a narrow passage was driven through it, which received the name of Traitor's Alley, Chiasso del Traditore. The price put upon his head was enormous—four thousand golden florins, with a pension of one hundred florins to the murderer and his heirs in perpetuity. The man who should kill Lorenzino was, further, to enjoy amnesty from all offenses and to exercise full civic rights; he was promised exemption from taxes, the privilege of carrying arms with two attendants in the whole domain of Florence, and the prerogative of restoring ten outlaws at his choice. If he captured Lorenzino and brought him alive to Florence, the reward would be double in each item. There was enough here to raise cupidity and stir the speculative spirit. Cecco Bibboni shall tell us how the business was brought to a successful termination.[225]

[Footnote 225: For the Italian text see Lorenzino de'Medici, Daelli, Milano, 1862. The above is borrowed from my Italian Byways.]

'When I returned from Germany,' begins Bibboni, 'where I had been in the pay of the Emperor, I found at Vicenza Bebo da Volterra, who was staying in the house of M. Antonio da Roma, a nobleman of that city. This gentleman employed him because of a great feud he had; and he was mighty pleased, moreover, at my coming, and desired that I too should take up my quarters in his palace.'

Bibboni proceeds to say how another gentleman of Vicenza, M. Francesco Manente, had at this time a feud with certain of the Guazzi and the Laschi, which had lasted several years, and cost the lives of many members of both parties and their following. M. Francesco, being a friend of M. Antonio, besought that gentleman to lend him Bibboni and Bebo for a season; and the two bravi went together with their new master to Celsano, a village in the neighborhood. 'There both parties had estates, and all of them kept armed men in their houses, so that not a day passed without feats of arms, and always there was some one killed or wounded. One day, soon afterwards, the leaders of our party resolved to attack the foe in their house, where we killed two, and the rest, numbering five men, entrenched themselves in a ground-floor apartment; whereupon we took possession of their harquebusses and other arms, which forced them to abandon the villa and retire to Vicenza; and within a short space of time this great feud was terminated by an ample peace.' After this Bebo took service with the Rector of the University in Padua, and was transferred by his new patron to Milan. Bibboni remained at Vicenza with M. Galeazzo della Seta, who stood in great fear of his life, notwithstanding the peace which had been concluded between the two factions. At the end of ten months he returned to M. Antonio da Roma and his six brothers, 'all of whom being very much attached to me, they proposed that I should live my life with them, for good or ill, and be treated as one of the family; upon the understanding that if war broke out and I wanted to take part in it, I should always have twenty-five crowns and arms and horse, with welcome home, so long as I lived; and in case I did not care to join the troops, the same provision for my maintenance.'

From these details we comprehend the sort of calling which a bravo of Bibboni's species followed. Meanwhile Bebo was at Milan. 'There it happened that M. Francesco Vinta, of Volterra, was on embassy from the Duke of Florence. He saw Bebo, and asked him what he was doing in Milan, and Bebo answered that he was a knight errant.' This phrase—derived, no doubt, from the romantic epics then in vogue—was a pretty euphemism for a rogue of Bebo's quality. The ambassador now began cautiously to sound his man, who seems to have been outlawed from the Tuscan duchy, telling him he knew a way by which he might return with favor to his home, and at last disclosing the affair of Lorenzino. Bebo was puzzled at first, but when he understood the matter, he professed his willingness, took letters from the envoy to the Duke of Florence, and, in a private audience with Cosimo, informed him that he was ready to attempt Lorenzino's assassination. He added that 'he had a comrade fit for such a job, whose fellow for the business could not easily be found.'

Bebo now traveled to Vicenza, and opened the whole matter to Bibboni, who weighed it well, and at last, being convinced that the Duke's commission to his comrade was bona fide, determined to take his share in the undertaking. The two agreed to have no accomplices. They went to Venice, and 'I,' says Bibboni, 'being most intimately acquainted with all that city, and provided there with many friends, soon quietly contrived to know where Lorenzino lodged, and took a room in the neighborhood, and spent some days in seeing how we best might rule our conduct.' Bibboni soon discovered that Lorenzino never left his palace; and he therefore remained in much perplexity, until, by good luck, Ruberto Strozzi arrived from France in Venice, bringing in his train a Navarrese servant, who had the nickname of Spagnoletto. This fellow was a great friend of the bravo. They met, and Bibboni told him that he should like to go and kiss the hands of Messer Ruberto, whom he had known in Rome. Strozzi inhabited the same palace as Lorenzino. 'When we arrived there, both Messer Ruberto and Lorenzino were leaving the house, and there were around them so many gentlemen and other persons, that I could not present myself, and both straightway stepped into the gondola. Then I, not having seen Lorenzino for a long while past, and because he was very quietly attired, could not recognize the man exactly, but only as it were between certainty and doubt. Wherefore I said to Spagnoletto, "I think I know that gentleman, but don't remember where I saw him." And Messer Ruberto was giving him his right hand. Then Spagnoletto answered, "You know him well enough; he is Messer Lorenzino. But see you tell this to nobody. He goes by the name of Messer Dario, because he lives in great fear for his safety, and people don't know that he is now in Venice." I answered that I marveled much, and if I could have helped him, would have done so willingly. Then I asked where they were going, and he said, to dine with Messer Giovanni della Casa, who was the Pope's Legate. I did not leave the man till I had drawn from him all I required.'

Thus spoke the Italian Judas. The appearance of La Casa on the scene is interesting. He was the celebrated author of the Capitolo del Forno, the author of many sublime and melancholy sonnets, who was now at Venice prosecuting a charge of heresy against Pier Paolo Vergerio, and paying his addresses to a noble lady of the Quirini family. It seems that on the territory of San Marco he made common cause with the exiles from Florence, for he was himself by birth a Florentine, and he had no objection to take Brutus-Lorenzino by the hand.

After the noblemen had rowed off in their gondola to dine with the Legate, Bibboni and his friend entered their palace, where he found another old acquaintance, the house-steward, or spenditore of Lorenzino. From him he gathered much useful information. Pietro Strozzi, it seems, had allowed the tyrannicide one thousand five hundred crowns a year, with the keep of three brave and daring companions (tre compagni bravi e facinorosi), and a palace worth fifty crowns on lease. But Lorenzino had just taken another on the Campo di San Polo at three hundred crowns a year, for which swagger (altura) Pietro Strozzi had struck a thousand crowns off his allowance. Bibboni also learned that he was keeping house with his uncle, Alessandro Soderini, another Florentine outlaw, and that he was ardently in love with a certain beautiful Barozza. This woman was apparently one of the grand courtesans of Venice. He further ascertained the date when he was going to move into the palace at San Polo, and, 'to put it briefly, knew everything he did, and, as it were, how many times a day he spit.' Such were the intelligences of the servants' hall, and of such value were they to men of Bibboni's calling.

In the Carnival of 1546 Lorenzino meant to go masqued in the habit of a gypsy woman to the square of San Spirito, where there was to be a joust. Great crowds of people would assemble, and Bibboni hoped to do his business there. The assassination, however, failed on this occasion, and Lorenzino took up his abode in the palace he had hired upon the Campo di San Polo. This Campo is one of the largest open places in Venice, shaped irregularly, with a finely curving line upon the western side, where two of the noblest private houses in the city are still standing. Nearly opposite these, in the south-western angle, stands, detached, the little old church of San Polo. One of its side entrances opens upon the square; the other on a lane which leads eventually to the Frari. There is nothing in Bibboni's narrative to make it clear where Lorenzino hired his dwelling. But it would seem from certain things which he says later on, that in order to enter the church his victim had to cross the square. Meanwhile Bibboni took the precaution of making friends with a shoemaker, whose shop commanded the whole Campo, including Lorenzino's palace. In this shop he began to spend much of his time; 'and oftentimes I feigned to be asleep; but God knows whether I was sleeping, for my mind, at any rate, was wide awake.'

A second convenient occasion for murdering Lorenzino soon seemed to offer. He was bidden to dine with Monsignor della Casa; and Bibboni, putting a bold face on, entered the Legate's palace, having left Bebo below in the loggia, fully resolved to do the business. 'But we found,' he says, 'that they had gone to dine at Murano, so that we remained with our tabors in their bag.' The island of Murano at that period was a favorite resort of the Venetian nobles, especially of the more literary and artistic, who kept country-houses there, where they enjoyed the fresh air of the lagoons and the quiet of their gardens.

The third occasion, after all these weeks of watching, brought success to Bibboni's schemes. He had observed how Lorenzino occasionally so far broke his rules of caution as to go on foot, past the church of San Polo, to visit the beautiful Barozza; and he resolved, if possible, to catch him on one of these journeys. 'It so chanced on February 28, which was the second Sunday of Lent, that having gone, as was my wont, to pry out whether Lorenzino would give orders for going abroad that day, I entered the shoemaker's shop, and stayed awhile, until Lorenzino came to the window with a napkin round his neck—for he was combing his hair —and at the same moment I saw a certain Giovan Battista Martelli, who kept his sword for the defense of Lorenzino's person, enter and come forth again. Concluding that they would probably go abroad, I went home to get ready and procure the necessary weapons, and there I found Bebo asleep in bed, and made him get up at once, and we came to our accustomed post of observation, by the church of San Polo, where our men would have to pass.' Bibboni now retired to his friend the shoemaker's, and Bebo took up his station at one of the side doors of San Polo: 'and, as good luck would have it, Giovan Battista Martelli came forth, and walked a piece in front, and then Lorenzino came, and then Alessandro Soderini, going the one behind the other, like storks, and Lorenzino, on entering the church, and lifting up the curtain of the door, was seen from the opposite door by Bebo, who at the same time noticed how I had left the shop, and so we met upon the street as we had agreed, and he told me that Lorenzino was inside the church.'

To any one who knows the Campo di San Polo, it will be apparent that Lorenzino had crossed from the western side of the piazza and entered the church by what is technically called its northern door. Bebo, stationed at the southern door, could see him when he pushed the heavy stoia or leather curtain aside, and at the same time could observe Bibboni's movements in the cobbler's shop. Meanwhile Lorenzino walked across the church and came to the same door where Bebo had been standing. 'I saw him issue from the church and take the main street; then came Alessandro Soderini, and I walked last of all; and when we reached the point we had determined on, I jumped in front of Alessandro with the poignard in my hand, crying, "Hold hard, Alessandro, and get along with you, in God's name, for we are not here for you!" He then threw himself around my waist, and grasped my arms, and kept on calling out. Seeing how wrong I had been to try to spare his life, I wrenched myself as well as I could from his grip, and with my lifted poignard struck him, as God willed, above the eyebrow, and a little blood trickled from the wound. He, in high fury, gave me such a thrust that I fell backward, and the ground besides was slippery from having rained a little. Then Alessandro drew his sword, which he carried in its scabbard, and thrust at me in front, and struck me on the corselet, which for my good fortune was of double mail. Before I could get ready I received three passes, which, had I worn a doublet instead of that mailed corselet, would certainly have run me through. At the fourth pass I had regained my strength and spirit, and closed with him, and stabbed him four times in the head, and being so close he could not use his sword, but tried to parry with his hand and hilt, and I, as God willed, struck him at the wrist below the sleeve of mail, and cut his hand off clean, and gave him then one last stroke on his head. Thereupon he begged for God's sake spare his life, and I, in trouble about Bebo, left him in the arms of a Venetian nobleman, who held him back from jumping into the canal.'

Who this Venetian nobleman, found unexpectedly upon the scene, was, does not appear. Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything of that Martelli, the bravo, 'who kept his sword for the defense of Lorenzino's person.' The one had arrived accidentally, it seems. The other must have been a coward and escaped from the scuffle.

'When I turned,' proceeds Bibboni, 'I found Lorenzino on his knees. He raised himself, and I in anger, gave him a great cut across the head, which split it in two pieces, and laid him at my feet, and he never rose again.'

Bebo, meanwhile, had made off from the scene of action. And Bibboni, taking to his heels, came up with him in the little square of San Marcello. They now ran for their lives till they reached the traghetto di San Spirito, where they threw their poignards into the water, remembering that no man might carry these in Venice under penalty of the galleys. Bibboni's white hose were drenched with blood. He therefore agreed to separate from Bebo, having named a rendezvous. Left alone, his ill luck brought him face to face with twenty constables (sbirri). 'In a moment I conceived that they knew everything, and were come to capture me, and of a truth I saw that it was over with me. As swiftly as I could I quickened pace and got into a church, near to which was the house of a Compagnia, and the one opened into the other, and knelt down and prayed commending myself with fervor to God for my deliverance and safety. Yet while I prayed, I kept my eyes well opened and saw the whole band pass the church, except one man who entered, and I strained my sight so that I seemed to see behind as well as in front, and then it was I longed for my poignard, for I should not have heeded being in a church.' But the constable, it soon appeared, was not looking for Bibboni. So he gathered up his courage, and ran for the Church of San Spirito, where the Padre Andrea Volterrano was preaching to a great congregation. He hoped to go in by one door and out by the other, but the crowd prevented him, and he had to turn back and face the sbirri. One of them followed him, having probably caught sight of the blood upon his hose. Then Bibboni resolved to have done with the fellow, and rushed at him, and flung him down with his head upon the pavement, and ran like mad, and came at last, all out of breath to San Marco.

It seems clear that before Bibboni separated from Bebo they had crossed the water, for the Sestiere di San Polo is separated from the Sestiere di San Marco by the Grand Canal. And this they must have done at the traghetto di San Spirito. Neither the church nor the traghetto are now in existence, and this part of the story is therefore obscure.[226]

[Footnote 226: So far as I can discover, the only church of San Spirito in Venice was a building on the island of San Spirito, erected by Sansavino, which belonged to the Sestiere di S. Croce, and which was suppressed in 1656. Its plate and the fine pictures which Titian painted there were transferred at that date to S. M. della Salute. I cannot help inferring that either Bibboni's memory failed him, or that his words were wrongly understood by printer or amanuensis. If for S. Spirito, we substitute S. Stefano, the account would be intelligible.]

Having reached San Marco, he took a gondola at the Ponte della Paglia, where tourists are now wont to stand and contemplate the Ducal Palace and the Bridge of Sighs. First, he sought the house of a woman of the town who was his friend; then changed purpose, and rowed to the palace of the Count Salici da Collalto. 'He was a great friend and intimate of ours, because Bebo and I had done him many and great services in times past. There I knocked; and Bebo opened the door, and when he saw me dabbled with blood, he marveled that I had not come to grief and fallen into the hands of justice; and, indeed, had feared as much because I had remained so long away.' It appears, therefore, that the Palazzo Collalto was their rendezvous. 'The Count was from home; but being known to all his people, I played the master and went into the kitchen to the fire, and with soap and water turned my hose, which had been white, to a grey color.' This is a very delicate way of saying that he washed out the blood of Alessandro and Lorenzino!

Soon after the Count returned, and 'lavished caresses' upon Bebo and his precious comrade. They did not tell him what they had achieved that morning, but put him off with a story of having settled a sbirro in a quarrel about a girl. Then the Count invited them to dinner; and being himself bound to entertain the first physician of Venice, requested them to take it in an upper chamber. He and his secretary served them with their own hands at table. When the physician arrived, the Count went downstairs; and at this moment a messenger came from Lorenzino's mother, begging the doctor to go at once to San Polo, for that her son had been murdered and Soderini wounded to the death. It was now no longer possible to conceal their doings from the Count, who told them to pluck up courage and abide in patience. He had himself to dine and take his siesta, and then to attend a meeting of the Council.

About the hour of vespers, Bibboni determined to seek better refuge. Followed at a discreet distance by Bebo, he first called at their lodgings and ordered supper. Two priests came in and fell into conversation with them. But something in the behavior of one of these good men roused his suspicions. So they left the house, took a gondola, and told the man to row hard to S. Maria Zobenigo. On the way he bade him put them on shore, paid him well, and ordered him to wait for them. They landed near the palace of the Spanish embassy; and here Bibboni meant to seek sanctuary. For it must be remembered that the houses of ambassadors, no less than those of princes of the Church, were inviolable. They offered the most convenient harboring-places to rascals. Charles V., moreover, was deeply interested in the vengeance taken on Alessandro de'Medici's murderer, for his own natural daughter was Alessandro's widow and Duchess of Florence. In the palace they were received with much courtesy by about forty Spaniards, who showed considerable curiosity, and told them that Lorenzino and Alessandro Soderini had been murdered that morning by two men whose description answered to their appearance. Bibboni put their questions by and asked to see the ambassador. He was not at home. 'In that case,' said Bibboni, 'take us to the secretary. Attended by some thirty Spaniards, 'with great joy and gladness,' they were shown into the secretary's chamber. He sent the rest of the folk away, 'and locked the door well, and then embraced and kissed us before we had said a word, and afterwards bade us talk freely without any fear.' When Bibboni had told the whole story, he was again embraced and kissed by the secretary, who thereupon left them and went to the private apartment of the ambassador. Shortly after he returned and led them by a winding staircase into the presence of his master. The ambassador greeted them with great honor, told them he would strain all the power of the empire to hand them in safety over to Duke Cosimo, and that he had already sent a courier to the Emperor with the good news.

So they remained in hiding in the Spanish embassy; and in ten days' time commands were received from Charles himself that everything should be done to convey them safely to Florence. The difficulty was how to smuggle them out of Venice, where the police of the Republic were on watch, and Florentine outlaws were mounting guard on sea and shore to catch them. The ambassador began by spreading reports on the Rialto every morning of their having been seen at Padua, at Verona, in Friuli. He then hired a palace at Malghera, near Mestre, and went out daily with fifty Spaniards, and took carriage or amused himself with horse exercise and shooting. The Florentines, who were on watch, could only discover from his people that he did this for amusement. When he thought that he had put them sufficiently off their guard, the ambassador one day took Bibboni and Bebo out by Canaregio to Malghera, concealed in his own gondola, with the whole train of Spaniards in attendance. And though on landing, the Florentines challenged them, they durst not interfere with an ambassador or come to battle with his men. So Bebo and Bibboni were hustled into a coach, and afterwards provided with two comrades and four horses. They rode for ninety miles without stopping to sleep, and on the day following this long journey reached Trento, having probably threaded the mountain valleys above Bassano, for Bibboni speaks of a certain village where the people talked half German. The Imperial Ambassador at Trento forwarded them next day to Mantua; from Mantua they came to Piacenza; thence passing through the valley of the Taro, crossing the Apennines at Cisa, descending on Pontremoli, and reaching Pisa at night, the fourteenth day after their escape from Venice.

When they arrived at Pisa, Duke Cosimo was supping. So they went to an inn, and next morning presented themselves to his Grace. Cosimo welcomed them kindly, assured them of his gratitude, confirmed them in the enjoyment of their rewards and privileges, and swore that they might rest secure of his protection in all parts of his dominion. We may imagine how the men caroused together after this reception. As Bibboni adds, 'We were now able for the whole time of life left us to live splendidly, without a thought or care.' The last words of his narrative are these: 'Bebo, from Pisa, at what date I know not, went home to Volterra, his native town, and there finished his days; while I abode in Florence, where I have had no further wish to hear of wars, but to live my life in holy peace.'

So ends the story of the two bravi. We have reason to believe, from some contemporary documents which Cantu has brought to light, that Bibboni exaggerated his own part in the affair. Luca Martelli, writing to Varchi, says that it was Bebo who clove Lorenzino's skull with a cutlass. He adds this curious detail, that the weapons of both men were poisoned, and that the wound inflicted by Bibboni on Soderini's hand was a slight one. Yet, the poignard being poisoned, Soderini died of it. In other respects Martelli's brief account agrees with that given by Bibboni, who probably did no more, his comrade being dead, than claim for himself, at some expense of truth, the lion's share of their heroic action.

Ambrogio Tremazzi.[227]

[Footnote 227: The text is published, from Florentine Archives, in Gnoli's Vittoria Accoramboni, pp. 404-414.]

In illustration of this narrative, and in evidence that it stands by no means solitary on the records of that century, I shall extract some passages from the report made by Ambrogio Tremazzi of Modigliana concerning the assassination of Troilo Orsini. Troilo it will be remembered, was the lover of the Medicean Duchess of Bracciano. After the discovery of their amours, and while the lady was being strangled by her husband, with the sanction of her brother Troilo escaped to France. Ambrogio Tremazzi knowing that his murder would be acceptable to the Medici, undertook the adventure; moved, as he says, 'solely by the desire of bringing myself into favorable notice with the Grand Duke; for my mind revolted at the thought of money payments, and I had in view the acquisition of honor and praise rather, being willing to risk my life for the credit of my Prince, and not my life only, but also to incur deadly and perpetual feud with a powerful branch of the Orsini family.' On his return from France, having successfully accomplished the mission, Ambrogio Tremazzi found that the friends who had previously encouraged his hopes, especially the Count Ridolfo Isolami, wished to compromise his reward by the settlement of a pension on himself and his associate. Whether he really aimed at a more honorable recognition of his services, or whether he sought to obtain better pecuniary terms, does not appear. But he represents himself as gravely insulted; 'seeing that my tenor of life from boyhood upwards has been always honorable, and thus it ever shall be.' After this exordium in the form of a letter addressed to one Signor Antonio [Serguidi], he proceeds to render account of his proceedings. It seems that Don Piero de'Medici gave him three hundred crowns for his traveling expenses; after which, leaving his son, a boy of twelve years, as hostage in the service of Piero, he set off and reached Paris on August 12, 1577. There he took lodgings at the sign of the Red Horse, near the Cordeilliers, and began at once to make inquiries for Troilo. He had brought with him from Italy a man called Hieronimo Savorano. Their joint investigations elicited the fact that Troilo had been lately wounded in the service of the King of France, and was expected to arrive in Paris with the Court. It was not until the eve of All Saints' day that the Court returned. Soon afterwards, Ambrogio was talking at the door of a house with some Italian comedians, when a young man, covered with a tawny-colored mantle, passed by upon a brown horse, bearing a servant behind him on the crupper. This was Troilo Orsini; and Ambrogio marked him well. Troilo, after some minutes' conversation with the players, rode forward to the Louvre. The bravo followed him and discovered from his servant where he lodged. Accordingly, he engaged rooms in the Rue S. Honore, in order to be nearer to his victim.

Some time, however, elapsed before he was able to ascertain Troilo's daily habits. Chance at last threw them together. He was playing primiero one evening in the house of an actress called Vittoria, when Troilo entered, with two gentlemen of Florence. He said he had been absent ten days from Paris. Ambrogio, who had left his harquebuss at home, not expecting to meet him, 'was consequently on that occasion unable to do anything.' Days passed without a better opportunity, till, on November 30, 'the feast of S. Andrew, which is a lucky day for me, I rose and went at once to the palace, and, immediately on my arrival, saw him at the hour when the king goes forth to mass.' Ambrogio had to return as he went; for Troilo was surrounded by too many gentlemen of the French Court; but he made his mind up then and there 'to see the end of him or me.' He called his comrade Hieronimo, posted him on a bridge across the Seine, and proceeded to the Court, where Troilo was now playing racquets with princes of the royal family. Ambrogio hung about the gates until Troilo issued from the lodgings of Monseigneur de Montmorenci, still tracked by his unknown enemy, and thence returned to his own house on horseback attended by several servants. After waiting till the night fell, Troilo again left home on horseback preceded by his servants with torches. Ambrogio followed at full speed, watched a favorable opportunity, and stopped the horse. When I came up with him, I seized the reins with my left hand and with my right I set my harquebuss against his side, pushing it with such violence that if it had failed to go off it would at any rate have dislodged him from his seat. The gun took effect and he fell crying out "Eh! Eh!" In the tumult which ensued, I walked away, and do not know what happened afterwards.' Ambrogio then made his way back to his lodgings, recharged his harquebuss, ate some supper and went to bed. He told Hieronimo that nothing had occurred that night. Next day he rose as usual, and returned to the Court, hoping to hear news of Troilo. In the afternoon, at the Italian theatre, he was informed that an Italian had been murdered, at the instance, it was thought, of the Grand Duke of Florence. Hieronimo touched his arm, and whispered that he must have done the deed; but Ambrogio denied the fact. It seems to have been his object to reserve the credit of the murder for himself, and also to avoid the possibility of Hieronimo's treachery in case suspicion fell upon him. Afterwards he learned that Troilo lay dangerously wounded by a harquebuss. Further details made him aware that he was himself suspected of the murder, and that Troilo could not recover. He therefore conferred upon the matter with Hieronimo in Notre Dame, and both of them resolved to leave Paris secretly. This they did at once, relinquishing clothes, arms, and baggage in their lodgings, and reached Italy in safety.

Lodovico dall'Armi.

The relations of trust which bravi occasionally maintained with foreign Courts, supply some curious illustrations of their position in Italian society. One characteristic instance may be selected from documents in the Venetian Archives referring to Lodovico dall'Armi.[228] This man belonged to a noble family of Bologna; and there are reasons for supposing that his mother was sister to Cardinal Campeggi, famous in the annals of the English Reformation. Outlawed from his native city for a homicide, Lodovico adopted the profession of arms and the management of secret diplomacy. He first took refuge at the Court of France, where in 1541 he obtained such credit, especially with the Dauphin, that he was entrusted with a mission for raising revolt in Siena against the Spaniards.[229] His transactions in that city with Giulio Salvi, then aspiring to its lordship, and in Rome with the French ambassador, led to a conspiracy which only awaited the appearance of French troops upon the Tuscan frontier to break out into open rebellion. The plot, however, transpired before it had been matured; and Lodovico took flight through the Florentine territory. He was arrested at Montevarchi and confined in the fortress of Florence, where he made such revelations as rendered the extinction of the Sienese revolt an easy matter. After this we do not hear of him until he reappears at Venice in the year 1545. He was now accredited to the English ambassador with the title of Henry VIII.'s 'Colonel,' and enjoyed the consideration accorded to a powerful monarch's privy agent.

[Footnote 228: See Rawdon Brown's Calendar of State Papers, vol. iv.]

[Footnote 229: See Botta, Book IV., for the story of Lodovico's intrigues at Siena.]

His pension amounted to fifty crowns a month, while he kept eight captains at his orders, each of whom received half that sum as pay. These subordinates were people of some social standing. We find among them a Trissino of Vicenza and a Bonifacio of Verona, the one entitled Marquis and the other Count. What the object of Lodovico's residence in Italy might be, did not appear. Though he carried letters of recommendation from the English Court, he laid no claim to the rank of diplomatic envoy. But it was tolerably well known that he employed himself in levying troops. Whether these were meant to be used against France or in favor of Savoy, or whether, as the Court of Rome suggested, Henry had given orders for the murder of his cousin, Cardinal Pole, at Trento, remained an open question. Lodovico might have dwelt in peace under the tolerant rule of the Venetians, had he not exposed himself to a collision with their police. In the month of August he assaulted the captain of the night guard in a street brawl; and it was also proved against him that he had despatched two of his men to inflict a wound of infamy upon a gentleman at Treviso. These offenses, coinciding with urgent remonstrances from the Papal Curia, gave the Venetian Government fair pretext for expelling him from their dominions. A ban was therefore published against him and fourteen of his followers. The English ambassador declined to interfere in his behalf, and the man left Italy. At the end of August he appeared at Brussels, where he attempted to excuse himself in an interview with the Venetian ambassador. Now began a diplomatic correspondence between the English Court and the Venetian Council, which clearly demonstrates what kind of importance attached to this private agent. The Chancellor Lord Wriothesley, and the Secretary Sir William Paget, used considerable urgency to obtain a suspension of the ban against Dall'Armi. After four months' negotiation, during which the Papal Court endeavored to neutralize Henry's influence, the Doge signed a safe-conduct for five years in favor of the bravo. Early in 1546 Lodovico reappeared in Lombardy. At Mantua he delivered a letter signed by Henry himself to the Duke Francesco Gonzaga, introducing 'our noble and beloved familiar Lodovico Dall'Armi,' and begging the Duke to assist him in such matters as he should transact at Mantua in the king's service.[230] Lodovico presented this letter in April; but the Duchess, who then acted as regent for her son Francesco, refused to receive him. She alleged that the Duke forbade the levying of troops for foreign service, and declined to complicate his relations with foreign powers. It seems, from a sufficiently extensive correspondence on the affairs of Lodovico, that he was understood by the Italian princess to be charged with some special commission for recruiting soldiers against the French.

[Footnote 230: This letter is dated February 16, 1546.]

The peace between England and France, signed at Guines in June, rendered Lodovico's mission nugatory; and the death of Henry VIII. in January 1547 deprived him of his only powerful support. Meanwhile he had contrived to incur the serious displeasure of the Venetian Republic. In the autumn of 1546 they outlawed one of their own nobles, Ser Mafio Bernardo, on the charge of his having revealed state secrets to France. About the middle of November, Bernardo, then living in concealment at Ravenna, was lured into the pine forest by two men furnished with tokens which secured his confidence. He was there murdered, and the assassins turned out to be paid instruments of Lodovico. It now came to light that Lodovico and Ser Mafio Bernardo had for some time past colluded in political intrigue. If, therefore, the murder had a motive, this was found in Lodovico's dread of revelations under the event of Ser Mario's capture. Submitted to torture in the prisons of the Ten, Ser Mafio might have incriminated his accomplice both with England and Venice. It was obvious why he had been murdered by Lodovico's men. Dall'Armi was consequently arrested and confined in Venice. After examination, followed by a temporary release, he prudently took flight into the Duchy of Milan. Though they held proof of his guilt in the matter of Ser Mafio's murder, the Venetians were apparently unwilling to proceed to extremities against the King of England's man. Early in February, however, Sir William Paget surrendered him in the name of Lord Protector Somerset to the discretion of S. Mark. Furnished with this assurance that Dall'Armi had lost the favor of England, the Signory wrote to demand his arrest and extradition from the Spanish governor in Milan. He was in fact arrested on February 10. The letter announcing his capture describes him as a man of remarkably handsome figure, accustomed to wear a crimson velvet cloak and a red cap trimmed with gold. It is exactly in this costume that Lodovico has been represented by Bonifazio in a picture of the Massacre of the Innocents. The bravo there stands with his back partly turned, gazing stolidly upon a complex scene of bloodshed. He wears a crimson velvet mantle, scarlet cap and white feather, scarlet stockings, crimson velvet shoes, and rose-colored silk underjacket. His person is that of a gallant past the age of thirty, high-complexioned, with short brown beard, spare whiskers and moustache. He is good to look at, except that the sharp set mouth suggests cynical vulgarity and shallow rashness. On being arrested in Milan, Lodovico proclaimed himself a privileged person (persona pubblica), bearing credentials from the King of England; and, during the first weeks of his confinement, he wrote to the Emperor for help. This was an idle step. Henry's death had left him without protectors, and Charles V. felt no hesitation in abandoning his suppliant to the Venetians. When the usual formalities regarding extradition had been completed, the Milanese Government delivered Lodovico at the end of April into the hands of the Rector of Brescia, who forwarded him under a guard of two hundred men to Padua. He was hand-cuffed; and special directions were given regarding his safety, it being even prescribed that if he refused food it should be thrust down his throat. What passed in the prisons of the State, after his arrival at Venice, is not known. But on May 14, he was beheaded between the columns on the Molo.

Venice, at this epoch, incurred the reproaches of her neighbors for harboring adventurers of Lodovico's stamp. One of the Fregosi of Genoa a certain Valerio, and Pietro Strozzi, the notorious French agent, all of whom habitually haunted the lagoons, roused sufficient public anxiety to necessitate diplomatic communications between Courts, and to disquiet fretful Italian princelings. Banished from their own provinces, and plying a petty Condottiere trade, such men, when they came together on a neutral ground, engaged in cross-intrigues which made them politically dangerous. They served no interest but that of their own egotism, and they were notoriously unscrupulous in the means employed to effect immediate objects. At the same time, the protection which they claimed from foreign potentates withdrew them from the customary justice of the State. Bedmar's conspiracy in 1617-18 revealed to Venice the full extent of the peril which this harborage of ruffians involved; for though grandees of the distinction of the Duke of Ossuna were involved in it, the main agents, on whose ambition and audacity all depended, sprang from those French, English, Spanish, and Italian mercenaries, who crowded the low quarters of the city, alert for any mischief, and inflamed with the wildest projects of self-aggrandizement by policy and bloodshed. Nothing testifies to the social and political decrepitude of Italy in this period more plainly than the importance which folk like Lodovico Dall'Armi acquired, and the revolutionary force which a man like Jaffier commanded.

Brigands, Pirates, Plague.

After collecting these stories, which illustrate the manners of the upper classes in society and prove their dependence upon henchmen paid to subserve lawless passions, it would be interesting to lay bare the life of the common people with equal lucidity. This, however, is a more difficult matter. Statistics of dubious value can indeed be gathered regarding the desolation of villages by brigands, the multitudes destroyed by pestilence and famine, and the inroads of Mediterranean pirates. I propose, therefore, to touch lightly upon these points, and especially to use our records of plague in different Italian districts as tests for contrasting the condition of the people at this epoch with that of the same people in the Middle Ages.

Brigandage, though this was certainly a curse of the first magnitude to Central and Southern Italy, cannot be paralleled, either for the miseries it inflicted, or for the ferocity it stimulated, with the municipal warfare of the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In those internecine struggles whole cities disappeared, and fertile districts were periodically abandoned to wolves. The bands of an Alfonso Piccolomini or a Sciarra Colonna plundered villages, exacted black mail, and held prisoners for ransom.[231] But their barbarities were insignificant, when compared with those commonly perpetrated by wandering companies of adventure before the days of Alberigo da Barbiano; nor did brigands cost Italy so much as the mercenary troops, which, after the Condottiere system had been developed, became a permanent drain upon the resources of the country. The raids of Tunisian and Algerian Corsairs were more seriously mischievous; since the whole sea-board from Nice to Reggio lay open to the ravages of such incarnate fiends as Barbarossa and Dragut, while the Adriatic was infested by Uscocchi, and the natives of the Regno not unfrequently turned pirates in emulation of their persecutors.[232]