Such are the words of the legal record, as quoted
by the historian. Caterina, the maid, had been
sent to the safe refuge of Orsini's feudal hold at
Bracciano. This woman, according to some of
the accounts of the story, was the sister of the
bandit Mancino.

Very little mystery, therefore, seems to hang
about the main points of the story. The
Countess Accoramboni had never given up her
ambitious hope of seeing her daughter the wife
of one of Rome's greatest nobles, whose first
consort had been a sovereign princess. Her
bandit son Marcello, who had been equally
anxious for the marriage of his sister with the
chief of the great Orsini family, had, in conjunction
with his mother, determined that the
marriage with Peretti, brought about by his father,
should not frustrate their hopes and plans; and
the noble suitor himself, who had with his own
hands disembarrassed himself of his first wife,
and who had no lack of men at his beck perfectly
ready to do any deed of blood he might command
them, had, without any difficulty, as we may well
suppose, fallen in with their views, as to the
best method of attaining the object of his wishes.
The murder was, there can be no question,
concocted by the Signora Accoramboni, her son
Marcello, and Prince Paolo Giordano Orsini.
But it is upon the cards—just upon the cards—
that Vittoria herself may not have had any
guilty knowledge of the plot. It is true, she is
recorded to have joined her mother-in-law in
imploring her husband not to go out on the
fatal expedition which led him to his murderers.
True, also, that, she composed an elegy on his
fate, still extant, in very unexceptionable
Petrarchian verse. But the entreaties of a
young wife to a young husband not to expose
himself to personal danger for the sake of
succouring her brother, might very easily, as everybody
can understand, be so shaped as to act as
so many incitements to him to meet the peril.
And as for the Petrarchian elegy, if, as there is
reason to suppose, it gave no umbrage to the
noble Orsini, we can hardly be justified in
attributing to it any great weight as an exposition of
her genuine sentiments. On the other hand,
there is the damning fact of her all but
immediate residence in the house of the man whom
all Rome knew, it may be said, to be the
murderer of her husband. Even supposing that
Orsini and her mother succeeded in persuading
her that he was innocent of any connexion with
the crime, still the suspicion, however erroneous,
which attached to him, ought to have made it
impossible for her to think of availing herself of
such an asylum.

The judicial investigation, as has been said,
had succeeded in obtaining evidence against the
Accorambonis, mother and son, and against a
prince whose name the police records were
afraid to mention. But with this information
Justice contented herself. No further steps
were taken in the matter, at the urgent request
of the Cardinal di Montalto. The Mancino was
released from prison, and sent away to his own
native village, with the intimation that his life
would be forfeited if he left it without express
permission from Rome. And thus far all was
decorously wiped up; and the disagreeables were
confined to the unlucky Peretti, who had lost
his life—not altogether without affording by his
death a useful social example for having dared
to marry one who was desired by a Roman
prince; and to his poor mother and uncle, who
had philosophy enough to remark that such
things must be expected in this world. But
still all was not quite satisfactorily settled. The
Duke of Bracciano had publicly announced his
intention of forthwith marrying the lovely widow,
who had so confidingly flown to his protection.
For the strong disapprobation of all the great
Orsini clan of such a match the powerful head
of the house seems to have cared little. But
there were other and more powerful personages,
as has been already observed, to whom such
a marriage was exceedingly distasteful. The
Medici conceived that the lustre of their name
would be tarnished by the misalliance of one
who had once been connected by marriage with
their own race. And the two brothers of the
ill-starred Isabella, the Duke of Florence and
the cardinal, thought it hard that, after having
connived at the murder of their sister for the
sake of preserving immaculate the fair fame of
both the Medici and Orsini name, their partner
in the enterprise should now spoil all by this
degrading alliance. The Cardinal dei Medici,
therefore, and the Spanish ambassador, whose
master fully entered into the feelings of his
friend and ally, the Duke of Florence, on this
subject, went together to Pope Gregory, and
besought him to prevent so great a scandal as
the intended marriage. The Pope found it
impossible to refuse two such applicants, and
he accordingly issued his precept to Orsini
to contract no such marriage without
express license from him, or, after his death,
from his successor. Moreover, as papal
precepts addressed to an Orsini were not always
very sure of meeting with obedience, to make
all sure, he shut up Vittoria in the castle of
St. Angelo.

The Medici had insisted to the Pope on
the "scandal" of the marriage they wished
to prevent. And scandalous enough such a
marriage would assuredly have been under
the circumstances of the case. But it is
worth remarking, that the only ground of
scandal thought of or mentioned, was the
inequality of birth between the parties. And
the papal prohibition was based on this ground
alone.

As is usual with them, the old historians who
have left us the record of the facts of this strange
story, are very chary in the matter of dates. But
with regard to this imprisonment of Vittoria,
they do furnish us with a couple of them. She
was sent to Saint Angelo in January, 1583, and
remained there till the tenth of April, 1585.
The latter day there was no mistaking, as it was
one of the great epochs of Roman history. On
the tenth of April, 1585, died Pope Gregory the
Thirteenth.