two girls. He then married Lucrezia Petroni, a
perfect beauty of the Roman type, except for the ivory pallor of her
complexion. By this second marriage he had no children.

As if Francesco Cenci were void of all natural affection, he hated his
children, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings towards them: on
one occasion, when he was building, in the courtyard of his magnificent
palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas, he remarked to
the architect, when instructing him to design a family vault, "That is
where I hope to bury them all." The architect often subsequently admitted
that he was so terrified by the fiendish laugh which accompanied these
words, that had not Francesco Cenci's work been extremely profitable, he
would have refused to go on with it.

As soon as his three eldest boys, Giacomo, Cristoforo, and Rocco, were
out of their tutors' hands, in order to get rid of them he sent them to
the University of Salamanca, where, out of sight, they were out of mind,
for he thought no more about them, and did not even send them the means
of subsistence. In these straits, after struggling for some months
against their wretched plight, the lads were obliged to leave Salamanca,
and beg their way home, tramping barefoot through France and Italy, till
they made their way back to Rome, where they found their father harsher
and more unkind than ever.

This happened in the early part of the reign of Clement VIII, famed for
his justice. The three youths resolved to apply to him, to grant them an
allowance out of their father's immense income. They consequently
repaired to Frascati, where the pope was building the beautiful
Aldobrandini Villa, and stated their case. The pope admitted the justice
of their claims, and ordered Francesco, to allow each of them two
thousand crowns a year. He endeavoured by every possible means to evade
this decree, but the pope's orders were too stringent to be disobeyed.

About this period he was for the third time imprisoned for infamous
crimes. His three sons them again petitioned the pope, alleging that
their father dishonoured the family name, and praying that the extreme
rigour of the law, a capital sentence, should be enforced in his case.
The pope pronounced this conduct unnatural and odious, and drove them
with ignominy from his presence. As for Francesco, he escaped, as on the
two previous occasions, by the payment of a large sum of money.

It will be readily