oni by night, and called him out, saying that
his best friend was in need of him, and was waiting for him at Monte
Cavallo. He hesitated, for it was very late. They had torches and
weapons, and would protect him, they said. Still he wavered. Then
Vittoria, his wife, scoffed at him, and called him coward, and thrust
him out to die; for she knew. The men walked beside him with their
torches, talking as they went. They passed the deserted land in the
Baths of Diocletian, and turned at Saint Bernard's Church to go towards
the Quirinal. Then they put out the lights and killed him quickly in the
dark.

His body lay there all night, and when it was told the next day that
Montalto's nephew had been murdered, the two men said that they had left
him at Monte Cavallo and that he must have been killed as he came home
alone. The Cardinal buried him without a word, and though he guessed the
truth he asked neither vengeance nor justice of the Pope.

[Illustration: VILLA NEGRONI

From a print of the last century]

Gregory the Thirteenth guessed it, too, and when Orsini would have
married Vittoria, the Pope forbade the banns and interdicted their union
for ever. That much he dared to do against the greatest peer in the
country.

To this, Orsini replied by plighting his faith to Vittoria with a ring,
in the presence of a serving woman, an irregular ceremony which he
afterwards described as a marriage, and he thereupon took his bride and
her mother under his protection. The Pope retorted by a determined
effort to arrest the murderers of Francesco; the Bargello and his men
went in the evening to the Orsini palace at Pompey's Theatre and
demanded that Giordano should give up the criminals; the porter replied
that the Duke was asleep; the Orsini men-at-arms lunged out with their
weapons, looked on during the interview, and considering the presence of
the Bargello derogatory to their master, drove him away, killing one of
his men and wounding several others. Thereupon Pope Gregory forbade the
Duke from seeing Vittoria or communicating with her by messengers, on
pain of a fine of ten thousand gold ducats, an order to which Orsini
would have paid no attention but which Vittoria was too prudent to
disregard, and she retired to her brother's house, leaving the Duke in a
state of frenzied rage that threatened insanity. Then the Pope seemed to
waver again, and then again learning that the lovers saw each other
constantly in spite of his comma