domains, was one of the greatest
personages in Italy. No longer young and already enormously fat, he was
married to Isabella de' Medici, the daughter of Cosimo, reigning in
Florence. She was a beautiful and evil woman, and those who have
endeavoured to make a martyr of her forget the nameless doings of her
youth. Giordano was weak and extravagant, and paid little attention to
his wife. She consoled herself with his kinsman, the young and handsome
Troilo Orsini, who was as constantly at her side as an official
'cavalier servente' of later days. But the fat Giordano, indolent and
pleasure seeking, saw nothing. Nor is there anything much more than
vulgar and commonplace in all this.

Paolo Giordano meets Vittoria Peretti in Rome, and the two commonplaces
begin the tragedy. On his part, love at first sight; ridiculous, at
first, when one thinks of his vast bulk and advancing years, terrible,
by and by, as the hereditary passions of his fierce race could be,
backed by the almost boundless power which a great Italian lord
possessed in his surroundings. Vittoria, tired of her dull and virtuous
husband and of the lectures and parsimony of his uncle, and not dreaming
that the latter was soon to be Pope, saw herself in a dream of glory
controlling every mood and action of the greatest noble in the land. And
she met Giordano again and again, and he pleaded and implored, and was
alternately ridiculous and almost pathetic in his hopeless passion for
the notary's daughter. But she had no thought of yielding to his
entreaties. She would have marriage, or nothing. Neither words nor gifts
could move her.

She had a husband, he had a wife; and she demanded that he should marry
her, and was grimly silent as to the means. Until she was married to him
he should not so much as touch the tips of her jewelled fingers, nor
have a lock of her hair to wear in his bosom. He was blindly in love,
and he was Paolo Giordano Orsini. It was not likely that he should
hesitate. He who had seen nothing of his wife's doings, suddenly saw his
kinsman, Troilo, and Isabella was doomed. Troilo fled to Paris, and
Orsini took Isabella from Bracciano to the lonely castle of Galera.
There he told her his mind and strangled her, as was his right, being
feudal lord and master with powers of life and death. Then from
Bracciano he sent messengers to kill Francesco Peretti. One of them had
a slight acquaintance with the Cardinal's nephew.

They came to the Villa Negr