chapel of the Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the spectacle must have been impressive.  Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life.  No wonder that the folk forgot her first husband’s murder, her less than comely marriage to the second.  It was enough for them that this flower of surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains in its bloom.  Gathering in knots around the torches placed beside the corpse, they vowed vengeance against the Orsini; for suspicion, not unnaturally, fell on Prince Lodovico.

The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court of Padua.  He entered their hall attended by forty armed men, responded haughtily to their questions, and demanded free passage for his courier to Virginio Orsini, then at Florence.  To this demand the court acceded; but the precaution of way-laying the courier and searching his person was very wisely taken.  Besides some formal dispatches which announced Vittoria’s assassination, they found in this man’s boot a compromising letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and asserting that Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their victim.  Padua placed itself in a state of defence, and prepared to besiege the palace of Prince Lodovico, who also got himself in readiness for battle.  Engines, culverins, and firebrands were directed against the barricades which he had raised.  The militia was called out and the Brenta was strongly guarded.  Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had dispatched the Avogadore, Aloisio Bragadin, with full power to the scene of action.  Lodovico Orsini, it may be mentioned, was in their service; and had not this affair intervened, he would in a few weeks have entered on his duties as Governor for Venice of Corfu.

The bombardment of Orsini’s palace began on Christmas Day.  Three of the Prince’s men were killed in the first assault; and since the artillery brought to bear upon him threatened speedy ruin to the house and its inhabitants, he made up his mind to surrender.  ’The Prince Luigi,’ writes one-chronicler of these events, ’walked attired in brown, his poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under his arm.  The weapon being taken from him, he leaned upon a balustrade, and began to trim his nails with a little pair of scissors he happened to find there.’  On the 27th he was strangled in prison by order of the Venetian Republic.  His body was carried to be buried, according to his own will, in the church of S. Maria dell’ Orto at Venice.  Two of his followers were hung next day.  Fifteen were executed on the following Monday; two of these were quartered alive; one of them, the Conte Paganello, who confessed to having slain Vittoria, had his left side probed with his own cruel dagger.  Eight were condemned to the galleys, six to prison, and eleven were acquitted.  Thus ended this terrible affair, which brought, it is said, good credit and renown to the lords of Venice through all nations of the civilised world.  It only remains to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope’s vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.