d, 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