The Cenci | Page 6

that they had no time to think of anything else. The result was, that
Francesco Cenci, inheriting vicious instincts and master of an immense
fortune which enabled him to purchase immunity, abandoned himself
to all the evil passions of his fiery and passionate temperament. Five
times during his profligate career imprisoned for abominable crimes, he

only succeeded in procuring his liberation by the payment of two
hundred thousand piastres, or about one million francs. It should be
explained that popes at this time were in great need of money.
The lawless profligacy of Francesco Cenci first began seriously to
attract public attention under the pontificate of Gregory XIII. This reign
offered marvellous facilities for the development of a reputation such
as that which this reckless Italian Don Juan seemed bent on acquiring.
Under the Bolognese Buoncampagno, a free hand was given to those
able to pay both assassins and judges. Rape and murder were so
common that public justice scarcely troubled itself with these trifling
things, if nobody appeared to prosecute the guilty parties. The good
Gregory had his reward for his easygoing indulgence; he was spared to
rejoice over the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Francesco Cenci was at the time of which we are speaking a man of
forty-four or forty-five years of age, about five feet four inches in
height, symmetrically proportioned, and very strong, although rather
thin; his hair was streaked with grey, his eyes were large and expressive,
although the upper eyelids drooped somewhat; his nose was long, his
lips were thin, and wore habitually a pleasant smile, except when his
eye perceived an enemy; at this moment his features assumed a terrible
expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved or even slightly
irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous trembling, which lasted
long after the cause which provoked it had passed. An adept in all
manly exercises and especially in horsemanship, he sometimes used to
ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one
leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine
marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be alone and unarmed
save for his sword and dagger. When his horse fell from fatigue, he
bought another; were the owner unwilling to sell he took it by force; if
resistance were made, he struck, and always with the point, never the
hilt. In most cases, being well known throughout the Papal States as a
free-handed person, nobody tried to thwart him; some yielding through
fear, others from motives of interest. Impious, sacrilegious, and
atheistical, he never entered a church except to profane its sanctity. It
was said of him that he had a morbid appetite for novelties in crime,
and that there was no outrage he would not commit if he hoped by so
doing to enjoy a new sensation.

At the age of about forty-five he had married a very rich woman, whose
name is not mentioned by any chronicler. She died, leaving him seven
children--five boys and two girls. He then married Lucrezia Petroni, a
perfect beauty of the Roman type, except for the ivory pallor of her
complexion. By this second marriage he had no children.
As if Francesco Cenci were void of all natural affection, he hated his
children, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings towards them: on
one occasion, when he was building, in the courtyard of his
magnificent palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas,
he remarked to the architect, when instructing him to design a family
vault, "That is where I hope to bury them all." The architect often
subsequently admitted that he was so terrified by the fiendish laugh
which accompanied these words, that had not Francesco Cenci's work
been extremely profitable, he would have refused to go on with it.
As soon as his three eldest boys, Giacomo, Cristoforo, and Rocco, were
out of their tutors' hands, in order to get rid of them he sent them to the
University of Salamanca, where, out of sight, they were out of mind,
for he thought no more about them, and did not even send them the
means of subsistence. In these straits, after struggling for some months
against their wretched plight, the lads were obliged to leave Salamanca,
and beg their way home, tramping barefoot through France and Italy,
till they made their way back to Rome, where they found their father
harsher and more unkind than ever.
This happened in the early part of the reign of Clement VIII, famed for
his justice. The three youths resolved to apply to him, to grant them an
allowance out of their father's immense income. They consequently
repaired to Frascati, where the pope was building the beautiful
Aldobrandini Villa, and stated their case. The pope admitted the