ive, and wanted for grave crimes
committed in the Duchy of Modena. History knows no more about him,
except that he had a wife and family. Of Niccolo da Pariana nothing has
to be related. Ottavio da Trapani was caught at Milan, brought back to
Lucca, and hanged there on June 13, 1604, after being torn with pincers.
Massimiliano is said to have made his way to Flanders, where the
Lucchese enjoyed many privileges, and where his family had probably
hereditary connections.[193] Like all outlaws he lived in perpetual
peril of assassination. Remorse and shame invaded him, especially when
news arrived that the mistress, for whom he had risked all, was turning
to a dissolute life (as we shall shortly read) in her monastery. His
reason gave way; and, after twenty-two years of wandering, he returned
to Lucca and was caught. Instead of executing the capital sentence which
had been pronounced upon him, the Signory consigned him to perpetual
prison in the tower of Viareggio, which was then an insalubrious and
fever-stricken village on the coast. Here, walled up in a little room,
alone, deprived of light and air and physical decency, he remained
forgotten for ten years from 1615 to 1625. At the latter date report
was made that he had refused food for three days and was suffering from
a dangerous hemorrhage. When the authorities proposed to break the wall
of his dungeon and send a priest and surgeon to relieve him, he declared
that he would kill himself if they intruded on his misery. Nothing more
was heard of him until 1629, when he was again reported to be at the
point of death. This time he requested the assistance of a priest; and
it is probable that he then died at the age of sixty-nine, having
survived the other actors in this tragedy, and expiated the passion of
his youth by life-long sufferings.

[Footnote 193: I may here allude to a portrait in our National Gallery
of a Lucchese Arnolfini and his wife, painted by Van Eyck.]

When we return to Sister Umilia, and inquire how the years had worn with
her, a new chapter in the story opens. In 1606 she was still cloistered
in S. Chiara, which indeed remained her home until her death. She had
now reached the age of thirty-four. Suspicion meanwhile fell upon the
conduct of the nuns of S. Chiara; and on January 9, in that year, a
rope-ladder was discovered hanging from the garden wall of the convent.
Upon inquiry, it appeared that certain men were in the habit of entering
the house an