rom a printer's devil to the Stanperia
Apostolica. The facts narrated in them, and the circumstances alluded
to, seem to me to throw a strange light on the administration of justice,
and the daily life of this priest-ruled country. It is as such that I
wish to comment on them. In these statements, be it remembered, there is
no question of political or clerical bias. The facts stated are all
facts, admitted by the authorities of their own free will and pleasure;
and if, as I think, these facts tell most unfavourably on the judicial
system of our clerical rulers, it is, at any rate, out of their own
mouths they are convicted. All, therefore, that I propose to do is,
having these official statements before me, to tell the stories that they
contain, as shortly and as clearly as I can, adding no comment of my own
but what is necessary to explain the facts in question. Let me take
first the case, which is entitled "Cannara contro Luigi Bonci;" the
township of Cannara, where the crime was committed, being what we should
call in a civil suit the plaintiff, and the accused Bonci the defendant.

CHAPTER V.--continued. THE "BONCI" MURDER.

Some three years ago, then, there lived in the hamlet of Cannara, near
Perugia, a family called Bonci. They belonged to the peasant class, and
were poor, even among the Papal peasantry. The family consisted of the
father and mother, and of their son and daughter, both grown up. Between
the father and son there had long been ill-blood. The cause of this want
of family harmony is but indistinctly stated, but apparently it was due
to the irregular habits of the son, and to the severity of the father;
while all this domestic misery was rendered doubly bitter by the almost
abject want of the household. On the night of November the 9th, 1856,
Venanzio Bonci, the father, Maria Rosa, his wife, and their daughter,
Caterina, were at supper in the miserable room, which formed the whole of
their dwelling, waiting for the return of the son, Luigi, who had been
absent ever since the morning. There had been frequent quarrels before
between father and son about Luigi's stopping out late, and now it was
past midnight. There was no light in the room except a faint flicker
from the embers, and the feeble glimmering of the starlight which entered
through the open windows. A noise was heard in the stable underneath the
room, and the father, thinking it was the son, called out three or four
times