who thus avenged her refusal to invest him with his elder brother's
rights. He escaped the hands of justice, though only to perish in some
other disastrous way. But the matricide had been committed on the very
day which closed the trial of the Cenci family for the assassination of
its Head; and it sealed Beatrice's fate. Her sentence seemed about to be
remitted. The Pope now declared that she must die.

... "Paolo Santo Croce
Murdered his mother also yestereve,
And he is fled: she shall not flee at least!"
(vol. xiv. p. 104.)

The elder son of the Marchesa, Onofrio Marchese dell' Oriolo, was
arrested on the strength of an ambiguous scrap of writing, which
appeared to implicate him in his brother's guilt; and subjected in
prison to such a daily and day-long examination on the subject of this
letter, that his mind gave way, and the desired avowal was extracted
from him. He confessed to having implied, under reserves and conditions
which practically neutralized the confession, his assent to his mother's
death. He was beheaded accordingly; and the Governor of Rome, Taverna,
who had conducted the inquisition, was rewarded by a Cardinal's hat.
Other motives were, however, involved in the proceeding than the Pope's
quickened zeal for justice. He had entrusted the case to his nephew,
Cardinal Aldobrandini; and it was known that the Cardinal and the
Marchese had courted the same lady, and the latter unwisely flaunted the
possession of a ring which was his pledge of victory.

This story, with other details which I have not space to give, was taken
from a contemporary Italian chronicle, of which some lines are literally
transcribed.