at Rome. The system of superseding law by
privilege, which lay at the root of most of the
social disorders of the age, existed in greater
intensity in Rome than in any other society.
The turbulences and disorders arising thence
were more constant, more audacious, and more
serious there than elsewhere. The wonderful
encroachment of ecclesiastical power, and its
strange and curious intermixture in all the
affairs of life, which also was one leading
characteristic of the time, was, as might have
been expected, most remarkable and most
mischievously active in Rome. It was the
headquarters, too, of literature, art, and magnificence.
The gorgeous and ostentatious splendour which
characterised the period were there to be seen
in their most dazzling excess and profusion. In
no city of similar size, probably, was ever
known so great an expenditure of wealth. For
Rome, like a spendthrift swindler, had the
spending of revenues drawn from every country
in Europe. Unproductive herself, she squandered
the lightly-come-by contributions from
every hive of industrious workers, and was only
left to beggary when her trick was detected.

Every new pope brought up fresh swarms of
relatives, dependents, friends, countrymen, to
seek their fortune in the great world-carnival.
In the papacy of a Genoese pope, Rome would
swarm with Ligurians. With a Medici in St.
Peter's chair, Florence almost monopolised the
good things which flow from the hand of Heaven's
vicegerent. With the Bolognese pope, who
held the keys at the time we are writing of,
Bologna had her turn. And the hot pursuit of
Fortune was all the hotter, and the means used
for attracting her smile were all the more unscrupulous,
because popes' reigns are mostly short.
In no case was the need of hurry to make hay
while the sun shone, more imperative. A pope's
death was as a sudden and entire turn of the
wheel of Fortune. Those who were at the top
found themselves, between the rising and the
setting of the sun, hurled to the bottom; and
those who were at the bottom as suddenly were
lifted to the top. And the recurrence of these
violent changes, which threw the whole Roman
world into tenfold confusion, turbulence, and
trouble, was strangely frequent. During the
whole of the sixteenth century the popes
reigned, on an average, only six years each. In
the natural course of things it must be expected
that the mode of making a pope would ensure
his being an old man. But this probability was
further increased by the frequent policy of the
College of Cardinals. The different parties who
found themselves, as would of course
frequently happen, unable to secure the election
they wished, would unite in selecting as pope
some member of their body whose age and
infirmities seemed to promise that they would
very shortly have another opportunity of trying
their strength in the conclave. Many popes
owed their elevation, solely to this consideration.

A thirteenth Gregory was seated in the chair
of St. Peter at the time Vittoria and her family
made their appearance on this seething, many-
coloured, and turbulent scene. We have not
the precise date of their journey. But it is
certain that it was after 1576, and before —
probably not much before — 1580. Rome was in a
yet more turbulent and lawless condition than
usual during these years. For the reigning
Pope was a particularly weak and incapable
ruler. Gregory the Thirteenth, we are told, was
not stained by any of those more glaring vices
which had marked many of his recent predecessors.
He simply neglected every portion
of his manifold duties. His father, as one of
the Venetian ambassadors reports to the Senate,
lived to be eighty, and his grandfather to be
ninety. And the great and absorbing object of
the Pope's thoughts and cares was to live as
long. With this view, says the ambassador, he
systematically refused to occupy himself with
any troublesome business, on the ground that
nothing is more conducive to longevity than a
mind at ease! When reports were made to
him of the scandalous scenes of anarchy and
violence which were continually occurring, and
were rendering his capital as unsafe a residence
for quiet citizens as a field of battle or a den of
robbers, he never was betrayed into expending
more of his carefully treasured vital force than
was needed for tranquilly observing that he
would pray for the evil-doers.

During this and the preceding centuries the
great feudal princes and barons of the ancient
and powerful clans of Savelli, Orsini, Colonna,
Gaetani, and others, such were the pest and ever-
present danger of Rome. Constantly in open
warfare with each other, and often with the
popes themselves, these haughty and unruly
subjects, and their numerous bodies of armed
retainers, who knew no law save the will of their
employer, often tasked to the utmost the strength
of the most vigorous of the popes. And under
such a ruler as Gregory the Thirteenth their
utter lawlessness reduced Rome to a state of
anarchy which, had it continued unchecked, must
have entirely sapped the foundations of all civil
society. A notice of one of the ordinary street
tumults that took place about the time in question,
as it has been preserved in the pages of a
contemporary chronicler, will serve to give an
idea of the sort of deeds which were wont to
pass in Rome unchecked and unpunished, and
will, at the same time, introduce to the reader
one of the principal "dramatis personae" in the
tale we have to tell.

The "Bargello," as the principal police-officer
of the city was called, had, with his band of
armed followers, arrested certain outlaws
belonging to the territory of Naples; and it
would seem that these men were in the pay, or
otherwise under the protection, of some one of
the great Roman barons. While the bargello,
therefore, was conducting his prisoners through
the streets, he was met by a cavalcade of noble
youths, Raimondo Orsini, Pietro Gaetani, Silla
Savelli, and others, who disputed his passage.
The bargello, writes the chronicler, "spoke to
them cap in hand, with great respect, endeavouring