long hair shining like woven gold in the moonlight, tried (so far as I could see) to persuade him to come in with her. This, however, he would not do, though grieving to refuse her; and she seemed to know the reason of it, and to cease to urge him. In and out of many things, which they seemed to have to talk of, he showed her the great chest in the dark corner; and perhaps she paid good heed to it. As to that, how can I tell, when they both were so far off, and river-fogs arising? Yet one thing I well could tell, or at any rate could have told it in the times when my blood ran fast, and my habit of life was romantic. Even though the light was foggy, and there was no time to waste, these two people seemed so to stay with a great dislike of severing. However, they managed it at last; and growing so cold in my shoulders now, as well as my knees uncomfortable, right glad was I to hear what the maiden listened to with intense despair; that is to say, the captain's footfall, a yard further off every time of the sound. He went along the Braunton road, to find his boat where the river bends. And much as I longed to know him better, and understand why he did such things, and what he meant by hankering so after this young lady, outside his own father's house, and refusing to go inside when invited, and speaking of his own bad luck so much, and having a chest put away from the moonlight, likewise his men in the distance so far, and compelled to keep round the corner, not to mention his manner of walking, and swinging his shoulders, almost as if the world was nothing to him; although I had never been perhaps so thoroughly pushed with desire of knowledge, and all my best feelings uppermost, there was nothing for me left except to ponder, and to chew my quid, rowing softly through the lanes and lines of misty moonlight, to my little cuddy-home across the tidal river. MORE ROBA DI ROMA. THE MAUSOLEUM OF HADRIAN, OR THE CASTLE ST ANGELO. CONCLUSION. CHAPTER VIII. On the 24th of April 1585, Felice Peretti became Pope under the title of Sixtus V. This bold, imperious, and self-willed friar succeeded Gregory XIII. (Hugo Buonconepagni), a man of very different cast of character. Gregory's acquaintance with the civil and canon law was remarkable, but his government was so weak and inefficient that his name became afterwards proverbial to express disorder, tumult, and timidity. "Corrono i tempi Gregoriani" was, as we learn from Tempesti, the phrase by which in later days the Romans denoted any specially lawless and violent period. During his reign, brigandage, assassination, and crime of every kind convulsed the State. In Rome, the streets were the theatre of perpetual conflict between the partisans of the noble houses and families who were at feud with each other. Cardinals and Monsignori were attacked in their carriages, cut off from their houses, and forced to take refuge wherever they could, and only secured their return by strong guards of soldiers. The police on occasion having arrested a criminal in the Orsini Palace, were assaulted, as they were bearing him away, by an armed band led by some of the chief of the young nobles, belonging to the houses of the Orsini, Rusticucci, and Capizucchi. The conflict lasted no less than three days, and spread through Rome. All the principal nobles joined in it. The streets were strewn with dead and wounded, the shops were closed, and everywhere reigned terror and one confusion. At last the matter was settled by the surrender of the Bargello, or chief of police, to the Orsini, by whom he was immediately put to death. Outside the city things were even worse. Brigandage was rampant in the Campagna and in the provinces. The highest nobles did not disdain to become the chieftains of bands of bravoes and banditti, whom they kept in their pay, to whom they gave protection, and from whom in turn they received support. Among these may be instanced Paolo Giordano Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, the lover of the famous Vittoria Accoramboni, and the supposed murderer of her husband and his own wife. Surrounded by strong bands of unscrupulous followers, he established himself in his numerous castles, defied the power of Church and State, and carried on with impunity a lawless course of war and brigandage. Ludovico Orsini, the assassin of Vittoria, was also notorious for his violent and reckless character; and a still more striking example of the times was Giovanni Battista del Monte, who, in league with certain leaders of banditti, attacked in open day the town of Civita Castellana, and massacred his enemies who there opposed him. Piccolomini, Duke of Monte Marciano, and Lamberto Malatesta of the family of Rimini, were equally lawless; ravaging and plundering the country, assaulting castles and towns, and laying the people under contribution, with complete impunity, Such was the state of things when Sixtus V. came to the throne. Before he was fairly seated in his chair, it was felt that the reins of power were in new and strong hands. Determined to insure by the strictest measures the peace of the city and the State, on the very morning after his election he addressed the conservators of the city, ordering them on peril of their lives to see to it that justice was firmly and sternly administered. To the chief of the Orsini his bearing was such that this powerful noble thought it prudent to assure his safety by flight. Even before his coronation he issued an edict prohibiting the carrying of firearms; and this having been disobeyed by four young brothers of the band of Sforza, who were found in the streets armed with arquebuses, they were immediately arrested; and despite the earnest prayers of the cardinals, who came to the Pope at night, and, throwing themselves at his feet, besought him to remember that executions before a coronation were unknown in Rome, the sentence of death was ordered to be carried out. On the following morning they were all hung on the Bridge of St Angelo; and the ghastly spectacle of their dead bodies still hanging in the air met the eyes of the Pope as he passed the bridge with his procession to his coronation. either betray their accomplices, or even assassinate them. Some of the strongest of the banditti at first defied the Pope, and even dared to attack the city, but one by one. they were forced to yield. The Castle St Angelo then saw many an execution. Malatesta, who during Gregory's reign had been the scourge of the Marches and the Romagna, was surrendered to Sixtus V. by the Duke of Tuscany, in whose territory he had sought refuge; and he was carried to Rome and publicly executed at St Angelo. Nor was the Pope contented with the punishment of new crimes, but crimes long ago committed were also expiated on the scaffold. Among others, Count Attilio Baschi, of Bologna, was then executed for a crime of parricide committed forty years before. Fossombrone, the accomplice of Ludovico Orsini in the assassination of Vincenzo Vitelli, was also torn by the pincers and hanged there. It was in allusion to this expiation of crimes long after they had been committed that a famous pasquinade was made, in which the statues of St Peter and St Paul, standing on the Bridge of St Angelo, hold the following dialogue:-"Why," says St Paul to St Peter, "do you carry that travelling-sack on your shoulders?" was Because," answered St Peter, "I am afraid of being condemned for having cut off the ear of Malchus." It was plain that Sixtus V. in earnest, and Rome trembled. Great was the public indignation, but great also was the fear. Within four days after his election a great change was manifest, and the Pope sternly carried on the work he had begun. By a bull issued on the 30th of April, six days after his election, he summoned all his subjects to lend their aid to the pursuit and capture of brigands; and at the sound of the alarm-bell he ordered all to take arms and pursue them. Prices were set on the heads of the brigands, and rewards and full pardon were offered to any who would VOL. CX.-NO. DCLXXIV. 66 The Church also felt the severe rule of Sixtus, and convent-walls were no longer a safe refuge for crime. A Franciscan friar was hung on the Bridge of St Angelo. Annibaldi Capello, a priest, who was accused of conveying information to England of what was occurring in Rome, was degraded from his office, had his tongue and hands cut off, and was then hanged on the same bridge. A friar who excited the people by falsely pretending that 3 A So determined was Sixtus to root out crime, that he often was guilty, in so doing, of injustice and of cruelty. On one occasion he hanged a woman because she had allowed her daughter to become the mistress of a noble; and the daughter, attired in a rich dress given her by her lover, was forced to be present at the execution of her mother. Niccolino Azzelino, a captain in the Pontifical guard, was also executed for having wounded an ensign in his company; and some young nobles, among whom were Virginio Orsini, Ascanio Sforza, and Marc Antonio Incoronati, having made light of the Pope's rigorous edicts by setting up a row of cats' heads on the points of pikes along the Bridge of St Angelo, were arrested, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Such, at last, was the fear of the Pope, that his very name was used by mothers to frighten their children to obedience-just as the Black Douglas's name was used in the early days of Scotland. "Zitto! ecco Sesto che passa.' For one pasquinade Sixtus exacted a savage punishment, altogether disproportioned to the offence, and in breach of honour and good faith. Marforio, alluding to the fact that the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, was a washerwoman, asks Pasquin why he wears such dirty linen. To this Pasquin replies, "Because my washerwoman has been made a princess." On hearing this, the Pope proclaimed a reward of 500 crowns and safety of life to the author if he would avow himself. But when he did avow himself, the Pope ordered his tongue and his hands to be cut off. Mutilation was one of the commonest punishments of this time. The barbarities of the earlier ages still existed, and branding, burning, quartering, dragging by horses, lopping off limbs, and tearing out tongues, were of constant occurrence. The cruel nature of Sixtus was well typified by the fact, that, during the Carnival, at each end of the Corso was a gibbet, erected to inspire fear and to check crime. One of the cruellest cases of this time is that of the aged Count Pepoli of Bologna. This nobleman had at one time given refuge to a bandit in one of his castles. The apostolic legate thereupon demanded that he should be surrendered; but Pepoli answered, that as his castle was a fief of the Empire he was not bound to give him up. The legate then sent a force to take him, but his soldiers were repulsed by the people of the Count. The Cardinal then arrested Pepoli, with the approbation of the Pope, and Pepoli was ordered to surrender the bandit, under pain, in case of refusal, of death and confiscation of all his property. Vainly the Duke of Ferrara and the Cardinal d'Este endeavoured to mitigate the Pope's severity. He was inexorable; so also was Pepoli, who, considering his honour engaged, absolutely refused to yield him up; and appealed to the Emperor to sustain him, by a letter which was intercepted, in which he expressed a hope that he should escape from the hands of this tyrant monk. He was then condemned to death, and strangled in his prison on the 27th of August 1585. Under the severe rule of Sixtus, brigandage and public violence suf fered a death-blow. His action was always bold and unrelenting, and often cruel, but he brought Rome out of the chaos of tumult and violence into order and peace. The old days are over, and from this time forward the face of history changes in Rome. There is less public tumult, less violence, less brigandage, and more law and justice. The haughty and reckless power of the nobility is curbed, and the people enjoy more quiet and more safety, both of property and of limb. A year after the Pope had been seated on the throne, he complained that he had been able to destroy only 7000 out of 27,000 brigands who ravaged his dominions. But long ere he ceased to reign, his unrelenting rule had almost entirely rooted out brigand age. * In the year 1599 occurred the tragical story of Beatrice Cenci, so familiar to all the world, and so closely connected by tradition with the Castle St Angelo. Her father, Count Francesco Cenci of Rome, was the son of Monsignore Cenci, who, as treasurer under the Pontificate of Pius V., had amassed an enormous fortune, which he left to his only son, Francesco; and this fortune Francesco afterwards increased by marriage with Lucrezia Petroni, a lady of a noble Roman family. His life was infamous, and stained with every species of vice and crime, for all of which, in the then venal condition of the Church, he was enabled to purchase immunity by the payment of large sums of money. Towards the close of a life spent in debauchery and wickedness, and when he had become an old man, he conceived a hatred of his children, which seems to have possessed him like a sort of mania, and exhibited itself in various forms of violence and cruelty. Supplica tions were accordingly made to the Pope to defend them from their father, and to punish him for his crimes. But the Pope permitted Francesco to compound for his crimes by the payment of 100,000 crowns, although he listened to the prayers of the eldest daughter, and, withdrawing her from his violence, gave her in marriage to Carlo Gabrielli. By this act Francesco Cenci was so enraged that he imprisoned his youngest daughter Beatrice in his palace, allowing no one to approach her, carrying her food to her himself, and often inflicting blows. upon her with a stick. Worse than this, he conceived an incestuous passion for her, and endeavoured, now by blandishment and now by violence, to frighten her into submission. But his effort was vain. She found means, however, to send to the Pope a supplication, imploring him to remove her from this horrible position; but the Pope turned a deaf ear to her entreaties. Maddened by this violence and cruelty, and incapable of defending themselves against him, the whole family then sought to free themselves from their tyrant by taking his life. With the assistance of Monsignor Guerra, a young ecclesiastic who was in love with Beatrice, they induced two of the vassals of Francesco Cenci, named Marzio and Olimpio, whom by his conduct he had made his enemies, to assassinate him. During the summer of 1598 he had gone to the Castle of Petrella, taking with him his family, and there the plan was carried into execution. After midnight, on the night of the 9th of September, the two assassins were introduced into his chamber, where he was sleeping profoundly, overcome by a potion mixed with opium, which had been * A full and interesting account of this period will be found in the able work of Baron Hübner on Sixtus V. |