decorated with garlands of flowers, bearing this inscription: "To the
liberator of his country."

Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna were again rival candidates.
Intrigues recommenced, and the Conclave was once more so divided that at
one time the cardinals thought they could only escape the difficulty in
which they were placed by doing what they had done before, and electing a
third competitor; they were even talking about Cardinal Orsini, when
Giulio di Medici, one of the rival candidates, hit upon a very ingenious
expedient. He wanted only five votes; five of his partisans each offered
to bet five of Colonna's a hundred thousand ducats to ten thousand
against the election of Giulio di Medici. At the very first ballot after
the wager, Giulio di Medici got the five votes he wanted; no objection
could be made, the cardinals had not been bribed; they had made a bet,
that was all.

Thus it happened, on the 18th of November, 1523, Giulio di Medici was
proclaimed pope under the name of Clement VII. The same day, he
generously paid the five hundred thousand ducats which his five partisans
had lost.

It was under this pontificate, and during the seven months in which Rome,
conquered by the Lutheran soldiers of the Constable of Bourbon, saw holy
things subjected to the most frightful profanations, that Francesco Cenci
was born.

He was the son of Monsignor Nicolo Cenci, afterwards apostolic treasurer
during the pontificate of Pius V. Under this venerable prelate, who
occupied himself much more with the spiritual than the temporal
administration of his kingdom, Nicolo Cenci took advantage of his
spiritual head's abstraction of worldly matters to amass a net revenue of
a hundred and sixty thousand piastres, about f32,000 of our money.
Francesco Cenci, who was his only son, inherited this fortune.

His youth was spent under popes so occupied with the schism of Luther
that they had no time to think of anything else. The result was, that
Francesco Cenci, inheriting vicious instincts and master of an immense
fortune which enabled him to purchase immunity, abandoned himself to all
the evil passions of his fiery and passionate temperament. Five times
during his profligate career imprisoned for abominable crimes, he only
succeeded in procuring his liberation by the payment of two hundred
thousand piastres, or about one million francs. It should be explained
that popes at this time were in great need of money.

The lawles