nths of his great enemy's
coronation, in the forty-ninth year of his age.

Vittoria retired to Padua, and the authorities declared the inheritance
valid, but Ludovico Orsini's long standing hatred of her was inflamed to
madness by the conditions of the will. Six weeks after the Duke's death,
at evening, Vittoria was in her chamber; her boy brother, Flaminio, was
singing a Miserere to his lute by the fire in the great hall. A sound of
quick feet, the glare of torches, and Ludovico's masked men filled the
house. Vittoria died bravely with one deep stab in her heart. The boy,
Flaminio, was torn to pieces with seventy-four wounds.

But Venice would permit no such outrageous deeds. Ludovico was besieged
in his house, by horse and foot and artillery, and was taken alive with
many of his men and swiftly conveyed to Venice; and a week had not
passed from the day of the murder before he was strangled by the
Bargello in the latter's own room, with the red silk cord by which it
was a noble's privilege to die. The first one broke, and they had to
take another, but Ludovico Orsini did not wince. An hour later his body
was borne out with forty torches, in solemn procession, to lie in state
in Saint Mark's Church. His men were done to death with hideous tortures
in the public square. So ended the story of Vittoria Accoramboni.

[Illustration]

REGION VI PARIONE

The principal point of this Region is Piazza Navona, which exactly
coincides with Domitian's race-course, and the Region consists of an
irregular triangle of which the huge square is at the northern angle,
the western one being the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova and the southern
extremity the theatre of Pompey, so often referred to in these pages as
one of the Orsini's strongholds and containing the little church in
which Paolo Giordano married Vittoria Accoramboni, close to the Campo
dei Fiori which was the place of public executions by fire. The name
Parione is said to be derived from the Latin 'Paries,' a wall, applied
to a massive remnant of ancient masonry which once stood somewhere in
the Via di Parione. It matters little; nor can we find any satisfactory
explanation of the gryphon which serves as a device for the whole
quarter, included during the Middle Age, with Ponte and Regola, in the
large portion of the city dominated by the Orsini.

The Befana, which is a corruption of Epifania, the Feast of the
Epiphany, is and always has been the season of giving prese