adventure, and went forth,
never to return. As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with
three harquebuses. His body was afterwards found on Monte Cavallo,
stabbed through and through, without a trace that could identify the
murderers. Only, in the course of subsequent investigations, Il
Mancino (on the 24th of February 1582) made the following
statements:--That Vittoria's mother, assisted by the waiting woman,
had planned the trap; that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of
Bracciano, two of the Duke's men, had despatched the victim. Marcello
himself, it seems, had come from Bracciano to conduct the whole
affair. Suspicion fell immediately upon Vittoria and her kindred,
together with the Duke of Bracciano; nor was this diminished when the
Accoramboni, fearing the pursuit of justice, took refuge in a villa of
the Duke's at Magnanapoli a few days after the murder.

A cardinal's nephew, even in those troublous times, was not killed
without some noise being made about the matter. Accordingly Pope
Gregory XIII. began to take measures for discovering the authors of
the crime. Strange to say, however, the Cardinal Montalto,
notwithstanding the great love he was known to bear his nephew, begged
that the investigation might be dropped. The coolness with which he
first received the news of Francesco Peretti's death, the
dissimulation with which he met the Pope's expression of sympathy in a
full consistory, his reserve in greeting friends on ceremonial visits
of condolence, and, more than all, the self-restraint he showed in the
presence of the Duke of Bracciano, impressed the society of Rome with
the belief that he was of a singularly moderate and patient temper. It
was thought that the man who could so tamely submit to his nephew's
murder, and suspend the arm of justice when already raised for
vengeance, must prove a mild and indulgent ruler. When, therefore, in
the fifth year after this event, Montalto was elected Pope, men
ascribed his elevation in no small measure to his condu