The pampering of his every appetite would seem to have induced in him its natural result,—the infinite perversity known to psychologists as a common consequence of the weariness that follows satiety. Francesco Cenci was twice married; by his first wife he had had seven children, one of whom had died in infancy; his second wife, Lucrezia Petroni was childless. One of the strangest sides of his horrible character was the intensity of hatred with which he regarded his surviving children. The three eldest, Giacomo, Cristoforo, and Rocco, he had sent to a Spanish university, where he kept them penniless and starving, till they could bear no more, and returned. His conduct towards them remained unchanged. Shortly before the commencement of that episode of his life with which the name of his daughter Beatrice is inseparably connected, he was imprisoned for the third and last time, and his three sons presented a petition to the Pope regnant, Clement VIII., imploring him, for the sake of the honour of their house, to make an end of their father. Clement, however, wanted money, and Francesco Cenci was released. His hate for his children was by no means lessened by this circumstance. Of his sons he never spoke but with curses; his two daughters he was in the habit of beating violently. The elder sister, however, found means to get a petition presented to Clement, in which she prayed to be removed to a convent. The Pope took pity on her, and gave her in marriage to a gentleman of Gubbio, obliging her father to dower her largely. Cenci was furious. He shut his daughter Beatrice, then aged fourteen, in a lonely room, where he visited her to bring her food, to beat her, and to revile her with her sister’s flight. It is said that it was in this place and under these circumstances that Francesco Cenci conceived the monstrous passion that resulted in his death.

Meanwhile Rocco Cenci had been assassinated, and a year afterwards his brother Cristoforo met with a like fate. Thereafter Francesco Cenci, whose joy at the news of his sons’ death is recorded to have been awful, ceased not to torture his unhappy wife and unhappier daughter to the utmost. The ordeal must indeed have been a terrible one that could have transformed the gay light-hearted girlhumorist into the grand woman who was afterwards to play such a notable part in crime and expiation. The accounts of Cenci’s conduct with her are not to be repeated. Meanwhile, however, a certain cardinal, Monsignor Guerra, one of the handsomest men in Rome, had fallen in love with her, and was in the habit of visiting the Palazzo Cenci whenever Francesco left it. Maddened by the failure of a petition for the redress of their wrongs, which they had addressed to Clement, and which had miscarried, Lucrezia and Beatrice turned for aid to the cardinal, and communicated to him their design of ending their troubles by the murder of the author of them. The cardinal allowed himself to be persuaded; he lost no time in sounding Giacomo Cenci, the elder brother, and, after Francesco, head of the house, without whose consent nothing could be attempted. Meetings were held in a room in the cardinal’s palace, and the advice of Lucrezia and Beatrice was taken on all points. For the execution of the design determined on, choice was made of two of Cenci’s vassals, Olimpio and Marzio, both of whom were violently incensed against their master,—Marzio out of pity for his mistresses, and Olimpio for his own wrong’s sake. It was at first proposed to cloak the murder in an attack and robbery by banditti. A dozen men were to be held in readiness to stop Francesco Cenci on his way to Petrella, a fief within the Neapolitan frontier, whether he was wont to betake himself in the summer. An enormous ransom was to be asked, with the alternative of death; the mother and daughter were to return to Rome to obtain the sum; and the assassins were to carry their threat into execution. But the scheme miscarried; Francesco reached Petrella in safety, and the conspirators were forced to arrange other combinations.

The old man’s treatment of his wife and daughter grew worse daily. He is said to have pretended that he believed them pleased and happy in his gray hairs and declining years, and to have tormented them with an incomparable ingenuity and ferocity. Beatrice at last found means to communicate with Monsignor Guerra, and it was agreed that, for the sum of a thousand piastres, one-third to be paid by the cardinal and the rest by Beatrice and Lucrezia, Olimpio and Marzio should enter the castle and kill Francesco in his bed. On September 9, 1588, accordingly, a strong opiate having been dexterously administered to the tyrant, the assassins were introduced into his chamber by Beatrice herself. Here they were overtaken with remorse; the spectacle of the old man sleeping was too much for them; and they retreated without accomplishing their intent. Beatrice, however, whose magnificent· personality had risen to the occasion, received them with such indignation, that they returned and slew the sleeper, much as Jael had slain Sisera, by driving a long nail through the eye into the brain, making assurance doubly sure by driving another through the throat. When this was done Beatrice presented them with a purse of money, and clothed Marzio in a mantle laced with gold, which had belonged to her father. She and Lucrezia then withdrew the nails from the corpse, which they folded in a sheet, and dragged through several rooms to a gallery looking into an unused garden, whence they flung it into the branches of a great elder tree that grew thereby. This gallery was used for such a purpose as would lend reality to the story they intended to tell, of Cenci’s leaving his bed to repair thither, and of his slipping and falling accidentally into the branches below.

Everything occurred as Beatrice and her mother had foreseen. The alarm was great, but Francesco’s death was accounted for naturally enough; his remains received an honourable burial, and the two women returned to Rome, and lived tranquilly there for several months. Suspicion, however, had been excited in Naples by the circumstances of the event, and a magistrate was sent to Petrella, who arrested all the people employed about the castle. Among them was a washerwoman to whom Beatrice had given the soiled linen from Cenci’s bed, with a story accounting in quite a natural way for the presence of so much blood. The woman, interrogated as to the credibility of the story, threw doubts upon it, basing her opinion on the unusual brightness of colour of the marks. Details of the interrogatory were sent to Rome, but no notice was taken, and Lucrezia and her children remained undisturbed. Meanwhile, however, Monsignor Guerra, as soon as he was informed of what was passing at Naples, had sent out emissaries charged with the murder of Francesco Cenci’s assassins. Olimpio alone had been dispatched. Marzio, arrested by the Neapolitan Government several months after the murder, was taken to Naples; he confessed everything.

On information being conveyed to Rome, Lucrezia and her three step-children, Giacomo, Bernardo, and Beatrice Cenci, were arrested. Lucrezia, Giacomo, and Bernardo were taken to the Corte Savella prison, while Beatrice was confined to the Cenci Palace, and guarded strictly by a troop of sbirri. Marzio, meanwhile, was brought from Naples, and confronted in the Corte Savella with Lucrezia and her daughter The majesty and strength of Beatrice in this interview were such that the old vassal withdrew his confession, and chose rather to expire under torture than to incriminate his mistresses further. In the absence of any other proof, the whole of the Cenci family were relegated to Sant’ Angelo, where they remained for several months. At the end of that time Olimpio’s assassin was arrested, and confessed as much as he knew. Monsignor Guerra fled from Rome, disguised as a charcoal-burner, and Lucrezia and her children were taken back again to the Corte Savella.

Put to the torture, Giacomo and Bernardo at once confessed the crime and their share in it. Lucrezia, too, who was of a luxurious habit of body, was not able to enduro the torture of the cord, and acknowledged her complicity also. But Beatrice was not made of such penetrable stuff. The cord made no impression on her whatever, and her genius and force of will so confounded Moscati, the judge charged with her interrogatory, that he made her the subject of a special report to the Pope. The examination was committed to a second of sterner reputation, and Beatrice was questioned by suspension by the hair. While in this posture her brothers and Lucrezia were introduced into the apartment. All of them urged her to confess. She reproached them with their little care for the honour of the family, but at last consented. She then answered the judge’s questions, denying the false and explaining the true. On the release of Beatrice from the torture and the examination, the four dined and spent the evening cheerfully together. Next day the two brothers were taken to the Tor di Nono, the women remaining in the Corte Savella; the Pope, having read the papers, had sentenced them to immediate death.

Immense efforts were made to obtain a commutation of the sentence, but a respite of twenty-five days was all that could be got. On the twenty-fifth day a body of advocates, among whom was the celebrated jurist Farinacei, presented themselves before Clement, to plead the cause of the accused; the Pope, however, refused to listen to them, and Farinacei alone was allowed to speak. They left their briefs, which Clement spent the night in reading. The next day all four prisoners were ordered to be confined au secret, and great hopes were entertained of pardon. But a scandalous case of matricide intervened; the assassin fled, and the Cenci were immolated in his stead, Farinacei succeeding after great efforts in saving the life of Bernardo, the youngest boy.

On the 1lth of September 1599, the four prisoners were conveyed to the scaffold. Lucrezia and Beatrice were on foot; Giacomo was drawn in a cart, and was subjected the whole way to the torture of the pincers, which he bore with great fortitude. Bernardo, who was young and longhaired, was extremely agitated, and was several times mistaken for Beatrice, who indeed was far from sharing her brother’s weakness. The heat was intense, the excitement unparalleled, the crowd enormous; several deaths from fever and sunstroke are said to have occurred during the day. Lucrezia and Beatrice were beheaded, and were afterwards buried, the one in the church of San Giorgio, the other in that of San Pietro in Montario. Giacomo was mazzolato — killed with a mace. Bernardo, who fainted several times, was removed to a convent,—“Oriental precautions” being taken, it is said, to prevent his disturbing the new owners in their possession of the confiscated estates of his house.

Part of these estates, conveyed to a cardinal nephew of •Clement, became the Villa Barberini. Therein are still preserved the portraits of Lucrezia Petroni and of Beatrice Cenci, the latter of which is said to be by Guido Reni. Shelley’s fine tragedy is well known; the poet has dealt freely with much of his material, but the result is of unapproachable excellence. See also the Chroniques ct Nouvelles of H. Beyle, whose account of the Cenci forms a remarkable page in a remarkable book.