The Cenci | Page 9

she-wolf, passionate alike in love and vengeance; she
endured all, but pardoned nothing.
Some days after this, the Abbe Guerra arrived at the Cenci palace to
carry out what had been arranged. Rich, young, noble, and handsome,
everything would seem to promise him success; yet he was rudely
dismissed by Francesco. The first refusal did not daunt him; he returned
to the charge a second time and yet a third, insisting upon the
suitableness of such a union. At length Francesco, losing patience, told
this obstinate lover that a reason existed why Beatrice could be neither
his wife nor any other man's. Guerra demanded what this reason was.
Francesco replied:
"Because she is my mistress."
Monsignor Guerra turned pale at this answer, although at first he did
not believe a word of it; but when he saw the smile with which
Francesco Cenci accompanied his words, he was compelled to believe

that, terrible though it was, the truth had been spoken.
For three days he sought an interview with Beatrice in vain; at length
he succeeded in finding her. His last hope was her denial of this
horrible story: Beatrice confessed all. Henceforth there was no human
hope for the two lovers; an impassable gulf separated them. They
parted bathed in tears, promising to love one another always.
Up to that time the two women had not formed any criminal resolution,
and possibly the tragical incident might never have happened, had not
Frances one night returned into his daughter's room and violently
forced her into the commission of fresh crime.
Henceforth the doom of Francesco was irrevocably pronounced.
As we have said, the mind of Beatrice was susceptible to the best and
the worst influences: it could attain excellence, and descend to guilt.
She went and told her mother of the fresh outrage she had undergone;
this roused in the heart of the other woman the sting of her own wrongs;
and, stimulating each other's desire for revenge, they, decided upon the
murder of Francesco.
Guerra was called in to this council of death. His heart was a prey to
hatred and revenge. He undertook to communicate with Giacomo Cenci,
without whose concurrence the women would not act, as he was the
head of the family, when his father was left out of account.
Giacomo entered readily into the conspiracy. It will be remembered
what he had formerly suffered from his father; since that time he had
married, and the close-fisted old man had left him, with his wife and
children, to languish in poverty. Guerra's house was selected to meet in
and concert matters.
Giacomo hired a sbirro named Marzio, arid Guerra a second named
Olympio.
Both these men had private reasons for committing the crime--one
being actuated by love, the other by hatred. Marzio, who was in the
service of Giacomo, had often seen Beatrice, and loved her, but with
that silent and hopeless love which devours the soul. When he
conceived that the proposed crime would draw him nearer to Beatrice,
he accepted his part in it without any demur.
As for Olympio, he hated Francesco, because the latter had caused him
to lose the post of castellan of Rocco Petrella, a fortified stronghold in
the kingdom of Naples, belonging to Prince Colonna. Almost every

year Francesco Cenci spent some months at Rocco Petrella with his
family; for Prince Colonna, a noble and magnificent but needy prince,
had much esteem for Francesco, whose purse he found extremely
useful. It had so happened that Francesco, being dissatisfied with
Olympio, complained about him to Prince Colonna, and he was
dismissed.
After several consultations between the Cenci family, the abbe and the
sbirri, the following plan of action was decided upon.
The period when Francesco Cenci was accustomed to go to Rocco
Petrella was approaching: it was arranged that Olympio, conversant
with the district and its inhabitants, should collect a party of a dozen
Neapolitan bandits, and conceal them in a forest through which the
travellers would have to pass. Upon a given signal, the whole family
were to be seized and carried off. A heavy ransom was to be demanded,
and the sons were to be sent back to Rome to raise the sum; but, under
pretext of inability to do so, they were to allow the time fixed by the
bandits to lapse, when Francesco was to be put to death. Thus all
suspicions of a plot would be avoided, and the real assassins would
escape justice.
This well-devised scheme was nevertheless unsuccessful. When
Francesco left Rome, the scout sent in advance by the conspirators
could not find the bandits; the latter, not being warned beforehand,
failed to come down before the passage of the travellers, who arrived
safe and sound at Rocco Petreila. The bandits, after having patrolled the