Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 415 pages of information about Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series.

Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 415 pages of information about Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series.
How accurate this judgment was, appeared when Sixtus V. assumed the reins of power.  The same man who, as monk and cardinal, had smiled on Bracciano, though he knew him to be his nephew’s assassin, now, as Pontiff and sovereign, bade the chief of the Orsini purge his palace and dominions of the scoundrels he was wont to harbour, adding significantly, that if Felice Peretti forgave what had been done against him in a private station, he would exact uttermost vengeance for disobedience to the will of Sixtus.  The Duke of Bracciano judged it best, after that warning, to withdraw from Rome.

Francesco Peretti had been murdered on the 16th of April 1581.  Sixtus V. was proclaimed on the 24th of April 1585.  In this interval Vittoria underwent a series of extraordinary perils and adventures.  First of all, she had been secretly married to the Duke in his gardens of Magnanapoli at the end of April 1581.  That is to say, Marcello and she secured their prize, as well as they were able, the moment after Francesco had been removed by murder.  But no sooner had the marriage become known, than the Pope, moved by the scandal it created, no less than by the urgent instance of the Orsini and Medici, declared it void.  After some while spent in vain resistance, Bracciano submitted, and sent Vittoria back to her father’s house.  By an order issued under Gregory’s own hand, she was next removed to the prison of Corte Savella, thence to the monastery of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, and finally to the Castle of S. Angelo.  Here, at the end of December 1581, she was put on trial for the murder of her first husband.  In prison she seems to have borne herself bravely, arraying her beautiful person in delicate attire, entertaining visitors, exacting from her friends the honours due to a duchess, and sustaining the frequent examinations to which she was submitted with a bold, proud front.  In the middle of the month of July her constancy was sorely tried by the receipt of a letter in the Duke’s own handwriting, formally renouncing his marriage.  It was only by a lucky accident that she was prevented on this occasion from committing suicide.  The Papal court meanwhile kept urging her either to retire to a monastery or to accept another husband.  She firmly refused to embrace the religious life, and declared that she was already lawfully united to a living husband, the Duke of Bracciano.  It seemed impossible to deal with her; and at last, on the 8th of November, she was released from prison under the condition of retirement to Gubbio.  The Duke had lulled his enemies to rest by the pretence of yielding to their wishes.  But Marcello was continually beside him at Bracciano, where we read of a mysterious Greek enchantress whom he hired to brew love-philters for the furtherance of his ambitious plots.  Whether Bracciano was stimulated by the brother’s arguments or by the witch’s potions need not be too curiously questioned.  But it seems in any case certain that absence inflamed his passion instead of cooling it.

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Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.