signor
Barca, the Visitor of S. Margherita, was about to make one of his
official tours of inspection.

This threat cost Caterina her life. About midnight, while a
thunder-storm was raging, Virginia, accompanied by her usual associates,
Ottavia, Benedetta, Silvia, and Candida, entered the room where the girl
was confined. They were followed by Osio, holding in his hand a heavy
instrument of wood and iron, called _piede di bicocca_, which he had
snatched up in the convent outhouse. He found Caterina lying face
downward on the bed, and smashed her skull with a single blow. The body
was conveyed by him and the nuns into the fowl-house of the sisters,
whence he removed it on the following night by the aid of Benedetta into
his own dwelling. From evidence which afterwards transpired, Osio
decapitated the corpse, concealed the body in a sort of cellar, and
flung the head into an empty well at Velate.

The disappearance of Caterina just before the visitation of Monsignor
Barca, roused suspicion; and, though a murder was not immediately
apprehended, the guilty associates felt that the cord of fate was being
drawn around them. In the autumn of 1607 the tempest broke upon their
heads. Virginia was removed from Monza to the convent called Del
Bocchetto at Milan; and on November 27 the depositions of the abbess,
prioress, and other members of S. Margherita were taken regarding Osio's
intrigues, the assassination of Soncini, and the disappearance of
Caterina.

Among the nuns who had abetted Osio, the two most criminally implicated
were Ottavia and Benedetta. Their evidence, if closely scrutinized, must
reveal each secret of the past. It was much to Osio's interest,
therefore, that they should not fall into the hands of justice; nor had
he any difficulty in persuading them to rely on his assistance for
contriving their escape to some convent in the Bergamasque territory. We
may wonder, by the way, what sort of discipline was then maintained in
nunneries, if two so guilty sisters counted upon safe entrance into an
asylum, provided only they could leave the diocese of Milan for
another.[190] On the night of Thursday, November 30, 1607, Osio came to
the wall of the convent garden, and began to break a hole in it, through
which Ottavia and Benedetta crept. The three then prowled along the city
wall of Monza, till they found a breach wide enough for exit. Afterwards
they took a path beside the river Lambro, and stopped for awhile at th