for.  There seems to have been no particular dispute about this, but on the morning of the murder, Simonetti was summoned before the overseer of the factory, on the ground of his refusal to pay the sum claimed by Avanzi of fifteen baiocchi, or seven pence halfpenny.  Simonetti did not deny that Avanzi had some claim upon him, but disputed the amount.  At last, the overseer proposed, as an amicable compromise, that Simonetti should pay down seven baiocchi as a settlement in full, sooner than have a formal investigation.  Both parties adopted the suggestion readily, and returned to their work apparently satisfied.  An hour and a half after, while Avanzi was sitting at his frame, with his face to the wall, Simonetti entered the room with an axe he had picked up in the carpenter’s store, and walking deliberately up to Avanzi, struck him with the axe across the neck, as he was stooping down.  Almost immediate death ensued, and on the arrival of the guard, Simonetti was arrested at once, and placed in irons.  Probably, as a matter of policy, so daring a crime required summary punishment; at any rate, Papal justice seems to have been executed with unexampled promptitude.  With what the report justly calls “laudable celerity,” the case was got ready for trial in a week, and on the 30th of July, the civil and criminal court of Civita Vecchia met to try the prisoner.  There could be no conceivable question about the case.  The murder had been committed during broad daylight, in a crowded room, and indeed, the prisoner confessed his guilt, and only pleaded gross provocation as an excuse.  There was no proof, however, that Avanzi had used irritating language; and even if he had, too long a time had elapsed between the supposed offence and the revenge taken, for the excuse of provocation to hold good.  Indeed, as the sentence of the court argues, in somewhat pompous language, “Woe to civil intercourse and human society, if, contrary to every principle of reason and justice, an attempt to enforce one’s just and legal rights by honest means, were once admitted as an extenuating circumstance in the darkest crimes, or as a sufficient cause for exciting pardonable provocation in the hearts of criminals.”  The tribunal too considers, that the crime of the prisoner was aggravated by the fact, that his mind remained unimpressed “by the horrors of his residence, or the dreadful aspect and sad fellowship of his thousand unfortunate companions in guilt, or by the flagrant penalties imposed upon him, for so many crimes.”  On all these grounds, whether abstract or matter-of-fact, the court declares the prisoner guilty of the wilful murder of Avanzi, and sentences him to death.