prove that Francesco's children gave him grievous provocation. The discontents of this ill-governed family matured into rebellion; and in 1598 it was decided on removing the old Cenci by murder. His second wife Lucrezia, his eldest son Giacomo, his daughter Beatrice, and the youngest son Bernardo, were implicated in the crime. It was successfully carried out at the Rocca di Petrella in the Abruzzi on the night of September 9. Two hired bravi, Olimpio Calvetti and Marzio Catalani, entered the old man's bedroom, drove a nail into his head, and flung the corpse out from a gallery, whence it was alleged that he had fallen by accident. Six days after this assassination Giacomo and his brothers took out letters both at Rome and in the realm of Naples for the administration of their father's property; nor does suspicion seem for some time to have fallen upon them. It awoke at Petrella in November, the feudatory of which fief, Marzio Colonna, informed the government of Naples that proceedings ought to be taken against the Cenci and their cut-throats. Accordingly, on December 10, a ban was published against Olimpio and Marzio. Olimpio met his death at an inn door in a little village called Cantalice. Three desperate fellows,

the instigation of Giacomo de' Cenci and Monsignore Querro, surprised him there. But Marzio fell into the hands of justice, and his evidence caused the immediate arrest of the Cenci. It appears that they were tortured and that none of

them denied the accusation; so that their advocates could only plead extenuating circumstances. To this fact may possibly be due the legend of Beatrice. In order to mitigate the guilt of parricide. Prospero Farinacci, who conducted her defense, established a theory of enormous cruelty and unspeakable outrages committed on her person by her father. With the same object in view, he tried to make out that Bernardo was half-witted. There is quite sufficient extant evidence to show that Bernardo was a young man of average intelligence; and with regard to Beatrice, nothing now remains to corroborate Farinaccio's hypothesis of incest. She was not a girl of siteen, as the legend runs, but a woman of twenty-two; and the codicils to her will render it nearly certain that she had given birth to an illegitimate son, for whose maintenance she made elaborate and secret provisions. That the picture ascribed to Guido Reni in the Barberini palace is not a portrait of Beatrice in prison, appears sufficiently proved. Guido did not come to Rome until 1608, nine years after her death; and catalogues of the Barberini gallery, compiled in 1604 and 1623, contain no mention either of a painting by Guido or of Beatrice's portrait. The Cenci were lodged successively in the prisons of Torre di Nona, Savelli, and S. Angelo. They occupied wholesome apartments and were allowed the attendance of their own

1 De Stendhal's MS. authority says she was sixteen, Shelley's that she was twenty.

domestics. That their food was no scanty dungeon fare appears from the menus of dinners and suppers supplied to them, which include fish, flesh, fruit, salad, and snow to cool the water. In spite of powerful influence at court, Clement VIII. at last resolved to exercise strict justice on the Cenci. He was brought to this decision by a matricide perpetrated in cold blood at Subiaco, on September 5, 1599. Paolo di S. Croce, a relative of the Cenci, murdered his mother Costanza in her bed, with the view of obtaining property over which she had control. The sentence issued a few days after this event. Giacomo was condemned to be torn to pieces by red hot pincers, and finished with a coup de grâce from the hangman's hammer. Lucrezia and Beatrice received the slighter sentence of decapitation; while Bernardo, in consideration of his youth, was let off with the penalty of being present at the execution of his kinsfolk, after which he was to be imprisoned for a year and then sent to the galleys for life. Their property was confiscated to the Camera Apostolica. These punishments were carried out.1 But Bernardo, after working at Cività Vecchia until 1606, obtained release and lived in banishment till his death in 1627. Monsignor Querro, for his connivance in the whole affair, was banished to the island of Malta, whence he returned at some date before the year 1633 to Rome, having expiated his

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

guilt by long and painful exile. In this abstract of the Cenci tragedy, I have followed the documents published by Signor Bertolotti. They are at many points in startling contradiction to the legend, which is founded on MS. accounts compiled at no distant period after the events. One of these was translated by Shelley; another, differing in some particulars, was translated by De Stendhal. Both agree in painting that lurid portrait of Francesco Cenci which Shelley has animated with the force of a great dramatist. Unluckily, no copy of the legal instructions upon which the trial was conducted is now extant. In the absence of this all-important source of information, it would be unsafe to adopt Bertolotti's argument, that the legend calumniates Francesco in order to exculpate Beatrice, without some reservation. There is room for the belief that facts adduced in evidence may have partly justified the prevalent opinion of Beatrice's infamous persecution by her father.

The 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 commonplace compared with that of the Massimi. Whether this family really descended from the Roman Fabii

The author of De Stendhal's MS. professes to have known the old Cenci, and gives a definite description of his personal appear

ance.

Litta supplies the facts related above.

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