ve a nail into
his head, and flung the corpse out from a gallery, whence it was alleged
that he had fallen by accident. Six days after this assassination
Giacomo and his brothers took out letters both at Rome and in the realm
of Naples for the administration of their father's property; nor does
suspicion seem for some time to have fallen upon them. It awoke at
Petrella in November, the feudatory of which fief, Marzio Colonna,
informed the government of Naples that proceedings ought to be taken
against the Cenci and their cut-throats. Accordingly, on December 10, a
ban was published against Olimpio and Marzio. Olimpio met his death at
an inn door in a little village called Cantalice. Three desperate
fellows, at the instigation of Giacomo de'Cenci and Monsignore Querro,
surprised him there. But Marzio fell into the hands of justice, and his
evidence caused the immediate arrest of the Cenci. It appears that they
were tortured and that none of them denied the accusation; so that
their advocates could only plead extenuating circumstances. To this fact
may possibly be due the legend of Beatrice. In order to mitigate the
guilt of parricide, Prospero Farinacci, who conducted her defense,
established a theory of enormous cruelty and unspeakable outrages
committed on her person by her father. With the same object in view, he
tried to make out that Bernardo was half-witted. There is quite
sufficient extant evidence to show that Bernardo was a young man of
average intelligence; and with regard to Beatrice, nothing now remains
to corroborate Farinaccio's hypothesis of incest. She was not a girl of
sixteen, as the legend runs, but a woman of twenty-two;[199] and the
codicils to her will render it nearly certain that she had given birth
to an illegitimate son, for whose maintenance she made elaborate and
secret provisions. That the picture ascribed to Guido Reni in the
Barberini palace is not a portrait of Beatrice in prison, appears
sufficiently proved. Guido did not come to Rome until 1608, nine years
after her death; and catalogues of the Barberini gallery, compiled in
1604 and 1623, contain no mention either of a painting by Guido or of
Beatrice's portrait. The Cenci were lodged successively in the prisons
of Torre di Nona, Savelli, and S. Angelo. They occupied wholesome
apartments and were allowed the attendance of their own domestics. That
their food was no scanty dungeon fare appears from the _menus_ of
dinners and suppers suppl