The Cenci

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CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

IN EIGHT VOLUMES




THE CENCI--1598

Should you ever go to Rome and visit the villa Pamphili, no doubt, after
having sought under its tall pines and along its canals the shade
and freshness so rare in the capital of the Christian world, you will
descend towards the Janiculum Hill by a charming road, in the middle of
which you will find the Pauline fountain. Having passed this monument,
and having lingered a moment on the terrace of the church of St. Peter
Montorio, which commands the whole of Rome, you will visit the cloister
of Bramante, in the middle of which, sunk a few feet below the level,
is built, on the identical place where St. Peter was crucified, a little
temple, half Greek, half Christian; you will thence ascend by a side
door into the church itself. There, the attentive cicerone will show
you, in the first chapel to the right, the Christ Scourged, by Sebastian
del Piombo, and in the third chapel to the left, an Entombment by
Fiammingo; having examined these two masterpieces at leisure, he will
take you to each end of the transverse cross, and will show you--on one
side a picture by Salviati, on slate, and on the other a work by Vasari;
then, pointing out in melancholy tones a copy of Guido's Martyrdom
of St. Peter on the high altar, he will relate to you how for three
centuries the divine Raffaelle's Transfiguration was worshipped in that
spot; how it was carried away by the French in 1809, and restored to
the pope by the Allies in 1814. As you have already in all probability
admired this masterpiece in the Vatican, allow him to expatiate, and
search at the foot of the altar for a mortuary slab, which you will
identify by a cross and the single word, Orate; under this gravestone
is buried Beatrice Cenci, whose tragical story cannot but impress you
profoundly.

She was the daughter of Francesco Cenci. Whether or not it be true that
men are born in harmony with their epoch, and that some embody its good
qualities and others its bad ones, it may nevertheless interest our
readers to cast a rapid glance over the period which had just passed
when the events which we are about to relate took place. Francesco Cenci
will then appear to them as the diabolical incarnation of his time.

On the 11th of August, 1492, after the lingering death-agony of Innocent
VIII, during which two hundred and twenty murders were committed in the
streets of Rome, Alexander VI ascended the pontifical throne. Son of
a sister of Pope Calixtus III, Roderigo Lenzuoli Borgia, before being
created cardinal, had five children by Rosa Vanozza, whom he afterwards
caused to be married to a rich Roman. These children were:

Francis, Duke of Gandia;

Caesar, bishop and cardinal, afterwards Duke of Valentinois;

Lucrezia, who was married four times: her first husband was Giovanni
Sforza, lord of Pesaro, whom she left owing to his impotence; the
second, Alfonso, Duke of Bisiglia, whom her brother Caesar caused to be
assassinated; the third, Alfonso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, from whom a
second divorce separated her; finally, the fourth, Alfonso of Aragon,
who was stabbed to death on the steps of the basilica of St. Peter, and
afterwards, three weeks later, strangled, because he did not die soon
enough from his wounds, which nevertheless were mortal; Giofre, Count
of Squillace, of whom little is known; and, finally, a youngest son, of
whom nothing at all is known.

The most famous of these three brothers was Caesar Borgia. He had made
every arrangement a plotter could make to be King of Italy at the death
of his father the pope, and his measures were so carefully taken as to
leave no doubt in his own mind as to the success of this vast project.
Every chance was provided against, except one; but Satan himself could
hardly have foreseen this particular one. The reader will judge for
himself.

The pope had invited Cardinal Adrien to supper in his vineyard on the
Belvidere; Cardinal Adrien was very rich, and the pope wished to inherit
his wealth, as he already had acquired that of the Cardinals of Sant'
Angelo, Capua, and Modena. To effect this, Caesar Borgia sent two
bottles of poisoned wine to his father's cup-bearer, without taking him
into his confidence; he only instructed him not to serve this wine
till he himself gave orders to do so; unfortunately, during supper the
cup-bearer left his post for a moment, and in this interval a careless
butler served the poisoned wine to the pope, to Caesar Borgia, and to
Cardinal Corneto.

Alexander VI died some hours afterwards; Caesar Borgia was confined to
bed, and sloughed off his skin; while Cardinal Corneto lost his sight
and his senses, and was brought to death's door.

Pius III succeeded Alexander VI, and reigned twenty-five days; on the
twenty-sixth he was poisoned also.

Caesar Borgia had under his control eighteen Spanish cardinals who owed
to him their places in the Sacred College; these cardinals were entirely
his creatures, and he could command them absolutely. As he was in a
moribund condition and could make no use of them for himself, he sold
them to Giuliano della Rovere, and Giuliano della Rovere was elected
pope, under the name of Julius II. To the Rome of Nero succeeded the
Athens of Pericles.

Leo X succeeded Julius II, and under his pontificate Christianity
assumed a pagan character, which, passing from art into manners, gives
to this epoch a strange complexion. Crimes for the moment disappeared,
to give place to vices; but to charming vices, vices in good taste,
such as those indulged in by Alcibiades and sung by Catullus. Leo X died
after having assembled under his reign, which lasted eight years, eight
months, and nineteen days, Michael Angelo, Raffaelle, Leonardo da Vinci,
Correggio, Titian, Andrea del Sarto, Fra Bartolommeo, Giulio Romano,
Ariosto, Guicciardini, and Macchiavelli.

Giulio di Medici and Pompeo Colonna had equal claims to succeed him. As
both were skilful politicians, experienced courtiers, and moreover of
real and almost equal merit, neither of them could obtain a majority,
and the Conclave was prolonged almost indefinitely, to the great fatigue
of the cardinals. So it happened one day that a cardinal, more tired
than the rest, proposed to elect, instead of either Medici or Colonna,
the son, some say of a weaver, others of a brewer of Utrecht, of whom no
one had ever thought till then, and who was for the moment acting head
of affairs in Spain, in the absence of Charles the Fifth. The jest
prospered in the ears of those who heard it; all the cardinals approved
their colleague's proposal, and Adrien became pope by a mere accident.

He was a perfect specimen of the Flemish type, a regular Dutchman, and
could not speak a word of Italian. When he arrived in Rome, and saw
the Greek masterpieces of sculpture collected at vast cost by Leo X, he
wished to break them to pieces, exclaiming, "Suet idola anticorum." His
first act was to despatch a papal nuncio, Francesco Cherigato, to the
Diet of Nuremberg, convened to discuss the reforms of Luther, with
instructions which give a vivid notion of the manners of the time.

"Candidly confess," said he, "that God has permitted this schism and
this persecution on account of the sins of man, and especially those
of priests and prelates of the Church; for we know that many abominable
things have taken place in the Holy See."

Adrien wished to bring the Romans back to the simple and austere manners
of the early Church, and with this object pushed reform to the minutest
details. For instance, of the hundred grooms maintained by Leo X, he
retained only a dozen, in order, he said, to have two more than the
cardinals.

A pope like this could not reign long: he died after a year's
pontificate. The morning after his death his physician's door was found
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 L32,000 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 lawless 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 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 then 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 understood that his sons' conduct on this occasion
did not improve their father's disposition towards them, but as their
independent pensions enabled them to keep out of his way, his rage
fell with all the greater intensity on his two unhappy daughters. Their
situation soon became so intolerable, that the elder, contriving to
elude the close supervision under which she was kept, forwarded to
the pope a petition, relating the cruel treatment to which she was
subjected, and praying His Holiness either to give her in marriage
or place her in a convent. Clement VIII took pity on her; compelled
Francesco Cenci to give her a dowry of sixty thousand crowns, and
married her to Carlo Gabrielli, of a noble family of Gubbio. Francesco
was driven nearly frantic with rage when he saw this victim released
from his clutches.

About the same time death relieved him from two other encumbrances: his
sons Rocco and Cristoforo were killed within a year of each other; the
latter by a bungling medical practitioner whose name is unknown; the
former by Paolo Corso di Massa, in the streets of Rome. This came as
a relief to Francesco, whose avarice pursued his sons even after their
death, for he intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing
on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves
which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both
interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing
children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining
five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the
last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire to celebrate the
event.

But Francesco took every precaution against his second daughter,
Beatrice Cenci, following the example of her elder sister. She was then
a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, beautiful and innocent as
an angel. Her long fair hair, a beauty seen so rarely in Italy, that
Raffaelle, believing it divine, has appropriated it to all his Madonnas,
curtained a lovely forehead, and fell in flowing locks over her
shoulders. Her azure eyes bore a heavenly expression; she was of middle
height, exquisitely proportioned; and during the rare moments when a
gleam of happiness allowed her natural character to display itself, she
was lively, joyous, and sympathetic, but at the same time evinced a firm
and decided disposition.

To make sure of her custody, Francesco kept her shut up in a remote
apartment of his palace, the key of which he kept in his own possession.
There, her unnatural and inflexible gaoler daily brought her some food.
Up to the age of thirteen, which she had now reached, he had behaved
to her with the most extreme harshness and severity; but now, to poor
Beatrice's great astonishment, he all at once became gentle and even
tender. Beatrice was a child no longer; her beauty expanded like a
flower; and Francesco, a stranger to no crime, however heinous, had
marked her for his own.

Brought up as she had been, uneducated, deprived of all society, even
that of her stepmother, Beatrice knew not good from evil: her ruin
was comparatively easy to compass; yet Francesco, to accomplish his
diabolical purpose, employed all the means at his command. Every
night she was awakened by a concert of music which seemed to come from
Paradise. When she mentioned this to her father, he left her in this
belief, adding that if she proved gentle and obedient she would be
rewarded by heavenly sights, as well as heavenly sounds.

One night it came to pass that as the young girl was reposing, her
head supported on her elbow, and listening to a delightful harmony, the
chamber door suddenly opened, and from the darkness of her own room she
beheld a suite of apartments brilliantly illuminated, and sensuous with
perfumes; beautiful youths and girls, half clad, such as she had seen
in the pictures of Guido and Raffaelle, moved to and fro in these
apartments, seeming full of joy and happiness: these were the ministers
to the pleasures of Francesco, who, rich as a king, every night revelled
in the orgies of Alexander, the wedding revels of Lucrezia, and the
excesses of Tiberius at Capri. After an hour, the door closed, and
the seductive vision vanished, leaving Beatrice full of trouble and
amazement.

The night following, the same apparition again presented itself, only,
on this occasion, Francesco Cenci, undressed, entered his daughter's
room and invited her to join the fete. Hardly knowing what she did,
Beatrice yet perceived the impropriety of yielding to her father's
wishes: she replied that, not seeing her stepmother, Lucrezia Petroni,
among all these women, she dared not leave her bed to mix with persons
who were unknown to her. Francesco threatened and prayed, but threats
and prayers were of no avail. Beatrice wrapped herself up in the
bedclothes, and obstinately refused to obey.

The next night she threw herself on her bed without undressing. At the
accustomed hour the door opened, and the nocturnal spectacle reappeared.
This time, Lucrezia Petroni was among the women who passed before
Beatrice's door; violence had compelled her to undergo this humiliation.
Beatrice was too far off to see her blushes and her tears. Francesco
pointed out her stepmother, whom she had looked for in vain the previous
evening; and as she could no longer make any opposition, he led her,
covered with blushes and confusion, into the middle of this orgy.

Beatrice there saw incredible and infamous things....

Nevertheless, she resisted a long time: an inward voice told her that
this was horrible; but Francesco had the slow persistence of a demon.
To these sights, calculated to stimulate her passions, he added
heresies designed to warp her mind; he told her that the greatest saints
venerated by the Church were the issue of fathers and daughters, and in
the end Beatrice committed a crime without even knowing it to be a sin.

His brutality then knew no bounds. He forced Lucrezia and Beatrice to
share the same bed, threatening his wife to kill her if she disclosed to
his daughter by a single word that there was anything odious in such an
intercourse. So matters went on for about three years.

At this time Francesco was obliged to make a journey, and leave the
women alone and free. The first thing Lucrezia did was to enlighten
Beatrice on the infamy of the life they were leading; they then together
prepared a memorial to the pope, in which they laid before him a
statement of all the blows and outrages they had suffered. But, before
leaving, Francesco Cenci had taken precautions; every person about the
pope was in his pay, or hoped to be. The petition never reached His
Holiness, and the two poor women, remembering that Clement VIII had on a
former occasion driven Giacomo, Cristaforo, and Rocco from his presence,
thought they were included in the same proscription, and looked upon
themselves as abandoned to their fate.

When matters were in this state, Giacomo, taking advantage of his
father's absence, came to pay them a visit with a friend of his, an abbe
named Guerra: he was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six, belonging
to one of the most noble families in Rome, of a bold, resolute, and
courageous character, and idolised by all the Roman ladies for his
beauty. To classical features he added blue eyes swimming in poetic
sentiment; his hair was long and fair, with chestnut beard and eyebrows;
add to these attractions a highly educated mind, natural eloquence
expressed by a musical and penetrating voice, and the reader may form
some idea of Monsignor the Abbe Guerra.

No sooner had he seen Beatrice than he fell in love with her. On her
side, she was not slow to return the sympathy of the young priest.
The Council of Trent had not been held at that time, consequently
ecclesiastics were not precluded from marriage. It was therefore decided
that on the return of Francesco the Abbe Guerra should demand the hand
of Beatrice from her father, and the women, happy in the absence of
their master, continued to live on, hoping for better things to come.

After three or four months, during which no one knew where he was,
Francesco returned. The very first night, he wished to resume his
intercourse with Beatrice; but she was no longer the same person, the
timid and submissive child had become a girl of decided will; strong in
her love for the abbe, she resisted alike prayers, threats, and blows.

The wrath of Francesco fell upon his wife, whom he accused of betraying
him; he gave her a violent thrashing. Lucrezia Petroni was a veritable
Roman she-wolf, passionate alike in love and vengeance; she endured all,
but pardoned nothing.

Some days after this, the Abbe Guerra arrived at the Cenci palace to
carry out what had been arranged. Rich, young, noble, and handsome,
everything would seem to promise him success; yet he was rudely
dismissed by Francesco. The first refusal did not daunt him; he
returned to the charge a second time and yet a third, insisting upon the
suitableness of such a union. At length Francesco, losing patience, told
this obstinate lover that a reason existed why Beatrice could be neither
his wife nor any other man's. Guerra demanded what this reason was.
Francesco replied:

"Because she is my mistress."

Monsignor Guerra turned pale at this answer, although at first he did
not believe a word of it; but when he saw the smile with which Francesco
Cenci accompanied his words, he was compelled to believe that, terrible
though it was, the truth had been spoken.

For three days he sought an interview with Beatrice in vain; at length
he succeeded in finding her. His last hope was her denial of this
horrible story: Beatrice confessed all. Henceforth there was no human
hope for the two lovers; an impassable gulf separated them. They parted
bathed in tears, promising to love one another always.