isputed by Ludovico Orsini, the
next in succession. Vittoria was spending her first few months of
widowhood in the Orsini palace at Padua, when one night the building was
entered by forty men, all masked in black, who came with murderous
intent. Marcello, the infamous brother, escaped their clutches; another
brother, much younger and innocent of all crime, was shot in the
shoulder and driven to his sister's room, where he thought to find
shelter; there they saw Vittoria, calmly kneeling at her _prie-dieu_,
rosary in hand, saying her evening prayers. As the story goes, she flung
herself before a crucifix, but all in vain, for she was stabbed in the
heart, one assassin turning the knife to make death absolutely certain.
She died saying, it is reported: "Jesus, I forgive you!" The next day,
when the deed was noised abroad, and the corpse of Vittoria was exposed
to the public gaze, her beauty, even in death, appealed to the Paduans;
and they at once rushed to Ludovico's palace, believing him guilty of
the crime or responsible for it in some way. The place was besieged, an
intercepted letter revealed the fact that Ludovico had killed Vittoria
with his own hand, and when the place was finally reduced and surrender
inevitable, the noble assassin coolly gave up his arms, and then began
to trim his finger-nails with a small pair of scissors, which he took
from his pocket, as if nothing had happened. It is evident that, having
accomplished his revenge upon this woman who had sullied the name of his
family, he was now content to take whatever fate might come; and when he
was strangled in prison, by order of the republic of Venice, he went to
his fathers like a brave man, without a sigh or tremor.

The story of Violante di Cordona exhibits the same disregard for moral
law and the same calm acceptance of death. As the Duchess of Palliano
and wife of Don Giovanni Caraffa, this beautiful woman was much courted
at her palace in Naples, where she lived in a most sumptuous way with
crowds of courtiers and admirers about her. Through the jealousy of
Diana Brancaccio, one of her ladies in waiting, who is described as
"hot-tempered and tawny-haired," the fair duchess was doomed to a sad
fate, and all on account of the handsome Marcello Capecce, who had been
her most ardent suitor. In Mrs. Linton's words, "his love for Violante
was that half religious, half sensual passion which now writes sonnets
to my lady as a saint, and now makes love to