added that Marcello Accoramboni was
surrendered to the Pope's vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also
his mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.

_The Duchess of Palliano_.

It was the custom of Italians in the 16th and 17th centuries to compose
and circulate narratives of tragic or pathetic incidents in real life.
They were intended to satisfy curiosity in an age when newspapers and
law reports did not exist, and also to suit the taste of ladies and
gentlemen versed in Boccaccio and Bandello. Resembling the London
letters of our ancestors, they passed from hand to hand, rarely found
their way into the printing office, and when they had performed their
task were left to moulder in the dust of bookcases. The private archives
of noble families abound in volumes of such tales, and some may still be
found upon the shelves of public libraries. These MS. collections
furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners. When
checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness,
inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts. The genius of the
Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch,
presided over their composition, adding _intreccio_ to disconnected
facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives,
turning the heroes or the heroines of their adventures into saints, and
blackening the faces of the villains. Yet these stories, pretending to
be veracious and aiming at information no less than entertainment,
present us with even a more vivid picture of customs than the Novelle.
By their truthful touches of landscape and incident painting, by their
unconscious revelation of contemporary sentiment in dialogue and ethical
analysis of motives, they enable us to give form and substance to the
drier details of the law-courts. One of these narratives I propose to
condense from the transcript made by Henri Beyle, for the sake of the
light it throws upon the tragedy of the Caraffa family.[207] It opens
with an account of Paul IV.'s ascent to power and a description of his
nephews. Don Giovanni, the eldest son of the Count of Montorio, was
married to Violante de Cardona, sister of the Count Aliffe. Paul
invested him with the Duchy of Palliano, which he wrested from Marc
Antonio Colonna. Don Carlo, the second son, who had passed his life as a
soldier, entered the Sacred College; and Don Antonio, the third, was
created Marquis of Montebello. The card