when a very much larger portion of the wealth
of the rich consisted in plate, gems, tapestry,
and other such movable goods, than in these
days of public funds and joint-stock companies,
the property secured to her by the decision of
the Venetian courts was very considerable,
sufficiently so in all probability to have already
worked a change in the fair widow's views as to
the desirability of ending her days in a convent,
and certainly not disposing her to adopt her
reverend brother's pious and fraternal mode of
looking at her position and prospects.

But if the sentence of the judges at Padua
was of sufficient, importance to make a notable
difference in the prospects of Vittoria, it had
unhappily a fully proportionate effect in
exasperating the rage and cupidity of her enemies.
And the result which followed in the powerful
and populous walled city of Padua, under the
strong and vigilant government of the Republic
of Venice—by far the best of any then existing
in Italy—is a notable and striking sample of
the social life of the sixteenth century.

That same night, the night of the twenty-third
of December, the house in which Vittoria was
living was forcibly entered by forty armed men
in disguise. The first person they met was
Flaminio Accoramboni, who was immediately
slain. Marcello, the other brother, had left the
house but a short time previously, and thus
saved his life. The assassins then proceeded to
the chamber of Vittoria, and one of them, a
certain Count Paganello, as it afterwards
appeared, seized her by the arms, as she threw
herself upon her knees, and held her, while
Bartolomeo Visconti—another noble, observe—
plunged a dagger into her side, and "wrenched
it upwards and downwards until he found her
heart."

CHAPTER IX. THE MAJESTY OF THE LAW.

HAD the deed thus quickly done, and quickly
told, been perpetrated in those days in any other
part of Italy save the territory of the Queen
of the Adriatic (and, it is fair to add, save Rome,
also, during the short five years of the papacy of
Sixtus the Fifth), this history would probably
have been all told, and have ended here. But
the government of Venice, with all its faults,
did perform more of the duties for which all
governments are established, than that of any
of the Italian states of that day, and meted
out justice with an impartiality and a vigour
unknown elsewhere. How much vigour was
needed for the task, and how hard a struggle
law—even in the hands of the powerful
and unbending oligarchy of Venice—had with
lawless violence, is curiously shown by what
follows.

The paucity of dates, universal in the old
Italian chroniclers, has already been complained
of. But with regard to the concluding facts of
this history, we are puzzled by the multiplicity
of them. They all, however, especially as given
by a contemporary writer, whose account was
reproduced in the pages of the Revue des Deux
Mondes some twenty years ago, mention days of
the month only. The murder of Vittoria is stated
to have taken place on the night of the twenty-
third of December. And the French writer tells
the story as not doubting that this was the
December following the November in which
Orsini died. Yet it is hardly possible to
suppose that all which must have happened in the
interim, the protest against the will, the
consultations between Ludovico and the Medici at
Florence, the action in the matter of the Duke
of Ferrara, and, above all, the legal examination
and decision of the Paduan law courts, all took
place within forty days. Moreover, some of the
dates assigned to the remaining facts of the
story are evidently erroneous. Assuming, then,
that the date of the murder is correctly given, as
being that least likely to have been forgotten,
the remaining facts may best be told without
attempting any accurate statement of the days
on which they occurred. They no doubt
happened as related, immediately after the commission
of the murder.

On the morning following, the bodies of the
murdered brother and sister were laid in a
neighbouring church, and all Padua thronged to
see the pitiful sight. The exceeding beauty of
Vittoria moved to frenzy the pity and indignation
of a people whose capacity for emotion was
fostered and cultivated by every peculiarity of
the social system in which they lived at the
expense of their reflective powers and judgment.
They "gnashed with their teeth," as the
historian says, against those who could have the
heart to destroy so lovely a form. Of course
the news of such a murder was very rapidly spread
all over Italy; and when it reached Rome, the
monk biographer of Sixtus naïvely tells us, the
Pope, who was in the act of sending off the five
hundred crowns which poor Vittoria had asked
of his charity, locked them up, and then visited
"the seven churches" to pray for her soul
instead.

It required very little sagacity to guess who
was the author of the audacious crime which had
been committed. And the magistrates of Padua
sent at once to Ludovico Orsini to summon him
to an examination. He presented himself at
the tribunal with forty armed men at his back.
The "Captain of the City"—the head of the
executive power—shut the gates of the town-
hall against this band, and signified to the prince
that he could bring in with him only three or
four followers. He pretended to assent, but
immediately on the door being opened, the
whole of the band rushed in. Before the
magistrates he began to bluster, affecting to
consider himself exceedingly ill-treated in being
thus summoned before a court of justice. Men
of his rank, he said, were not wont to be
questioned. As for the death of the late prince's
wife, and that of her brother, he knew nothing
of the matter; but he should hold the
magistrates responsible for the safeguard of
the property she had held in her hands,
which he demanded should be delivered over to
him.

In all sincerity, the noble and lawless