The Cenci | Page 7

justice
of their claims, and ordered Francesco, to allow each of them two
thousand crowns a year. He endeavoured by every possible means to
evade this decree, but the pope's orders were too stringent to be
disobeyed.
About this period he was for the third time imprisoned for infamous
crimes. His three sons them again petitioned the pope, alleging that
their father dishonoured the family name, and praying that the extreme
rigour of the law, a capital sentence, should be enforced in his case.
The pope pronounced this conduct unnatural and odious, and drove

them with ignominy from his presence. As for Francesco, he escaped,
as on the two previous occasions, by the payment of a large sum of
money.
It will be readily understood that his sons' conduct on this occasion did
not improve their father's disposition towards them, but as their
independent pensions enabled them to keep out of his way, his rage fell
with all the greater intensity on his two unhappy daughters. Their
situation soon became so intolerable, that the elder, contriving to elude
the close supervision under which she was kept, forwarded to the pope
a petition, relating the cruel treatment to which she was subjected, and
praying His Holiness either to give her in marriage or place her in a
convent. Clement VIII took pity on her; compelled Francesco Cenci to
give her a dowry of sixty thousand crowns, and married her to Carlo
Gabrielli, of a noble family of Gubbio. Francesco driven nearly frantic
with rage when he saw this victim released from his clutches.
About the same time death relieved him from two other encumbrances:
his sons Rocco and Cristoforo were killed within a year of each other;
the latter by a bungling medical practitioner whose name is unknown;
the former by Paolo Corso di Massa, in the streets of Rome. This came
as a relief to Francesco, whose avarice pursued his sons even after their
death, far he intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing
on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves
which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them
both interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing
children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the
remaining five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got
rid of the last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire to
celebrate the event.
But Francesco took every precaution against his second daughter,
Beatrice Cenci, following the example of her elder sister. She was then
a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, beautiful and innocent as an
angel. Her long fair hair, a beauty seen so rarely in Italy, that Raffaelle,
believing it divine, has appropriated it to all his Madonnas, curtained a
lovely forehead, and fell in flowing locks over her shoulders. Her azure
eyes bore a heavenly expression; she was of middle height, exquisitely
proportioned; and during the rare moments when a gleam of happiness
allowed her natural character to display itself, she was lively, joyous,

and sympathetic, but at the same time evinced a firm and decided
disposition.
To make sure of her custody, Francesco kept her shut up in a remote
apartment of his palace, the key of which he kept in his own possession.
There, her unnatural and inflexible gaoler daily brought her some food.
Up to the age of thirteen, which she had now reached, he had behaved
to her with the most extreme harshness and severity; but now, to poor
Beatrice's great astonishment, he all at once became gentle and even
tender. Beatrice was a child no longer; her beauty expanded like a
flower; and Francesco, a stranger to no crime, however heinous, had
marked her for his own.
Brought up as she had been, uneducated, deprived of all society, even
that of her stepmother, Beatrice knew not good from evil: her ruin was
comparatively easy to compass; yet Francesco, to accomplish his
diabolical purpose, employed all the means at his command. Every
night she was awakened by a concert of music which seemed to come
from Paradise. When she mentioned this to her father, he left her in this
belief, adding that if she proved gentle and obedient she would be
rewarded by heavenly sights, as well as heavenly sounds.
One night it came to pass that as the young girl was reposing, her head
supported on her elbow, and listening to a delightful harmony, the
chamber door suddenly opened, and from the darkness of her own
room she beheld a suite of apartments brilliantly illuminated, and
sensuous with perfumes; beautiful youths and girls, half clad, such as
she had seen in the pictures of Guido and