the breaking down of a balcony over a shop,
where too many had crowded in to see. The old house opposite looked down
upon the scene, and the people watched Beatrice Cenci die from those
same arched windows. Above the sea of faces, high on the wooden
scaffold, rises the tall figure of a lovely girl, her hair gleaming in
the sunshine like threads of dazzling gold, her marvellous blue eyes
turned up to Heaven, her fresh young dimpled face not pale with fear,
her exquisite lips moving softly as she repeats the De Profundis of her
last appeal to God. Let the axe not fall. Let her stand there for ever
in the spotless purity that cost her life on earth and set her name for
ever among the high constellated stars of maidenly romance.

Close by the bridge, just opposite the Torre di Nona, stood the 'Lion
Inn,' once kept by the beautiful Vanozza de Catanei, the mother of
Rodrigo Borgia's children, of Caesar, and Gandia, and Lucrezia, and the
place was her property still when she was nominally married to her
second husband, Carlo Canale, the keeper of the prison across the way.
In the changing vicissitudes of the city, the Torre di Nona made way for
the once famous Apollo Theatre, built upon the lower dungeons and
foundations, and Faust's demon companion rose to the stage out of the
depths that had heard the groans of tortured criminals; the theatre
itself disappeared a few years ago in the works for improving the
Tiber's banks, and a name is all that remains of a fact that made men
tremble. In the late destruction, the old houses opposite were not
altogether pulled down, but were sliced, as it were, through their roofs
and rooms, at a safe angle; and there, no doubt, are still standing
portions of Vanozza's inn, while far below, the cellars where she kept
her wine free of excise, by papal privilege, are still as cool and
silent as ever.

Not far beyond her hostelry stands another Inn, famous from early days
and still open to such travellers as deign to accept its poor
hospitality. It is an inn for the people now, for wine carters, and the
better sort of hill peasants; it was once the best and most fashionable
in Rome, and there the great Montaigne once dwelt, and is believed to
have written at least a part of his famous Essay on Vanity. It is the
Albergo dell' Orso, the 'Bear Inn,' and perhaps it is not a coincidence
that Vanozza's sign of the Lion should have faced the approach to the
Leonine City beyond the Tiber, and that the