s profligacy of Francesco Cenci first began seriously to
attract public attention under the pontificate of Gregory XIII. This
reign offered marvellous facilities for the development of a reputation
such as that which this reckless Italian Don Juan seemed bent on
acquiring. Under the Bolognese Buoncampagno, a free hand was given to
those able to pay both assassins and judges. Rape and murder were so
common that public justice scarcely troubled itself with these trifling
things, if nobody appeared to prosecute the guilty parties. The good
Gregory had his reward for his easygoing indulgence; he was spared to
rejoice over the Massacre of St. Bartholomew.

Francesco Cenci was at the time of which we are speaking a man of
forty-four or forty-five years of age, about five feet four inches in
height, symmetrically proportioned, and very strong, although rather
thin; his hair was streaked with grey, his eyes were large and
expressive, although the upper eyelids drooped somewhat; his nose was
long, his lips were thin, and wore habitually a pleasant smile, except
when his eye perceived an enemy; at this moment his features assumed a
terrible expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved or even
slightly irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous trembling, which
lasted long after the cause which provoked it had passed. An adept in
all manly exercises and especially in horsemanship, he sometimes used to
ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one
leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine
marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be alone and unarmed save
for his sword and dagger. When his horse fell from fatigue, he bought
another; were the owner unwilling to sell he took it by force; if
resistance were made, he struck, and always with the point, never the
hilt. In most cases, being well known throughout the Papal States as a
free-handed person, nobody tried to thwart him; some yielding through
fear, others from motives of interest. Impious, sacrilegious, and
atheistical, he never entered a church except to profane its sanctity.
It was said of him that he had a morbid appetite for novelties in crime,
and that there was no outrage he would not commit if he hoped by so doing
to enjoy a new sensation.

At the age of about forty-five he had married a very rich woman, whose
name is not mentioned by any chronicler. She died, leaving him seven
children--five boys and