s too late. The Pope heard something, which sufficed to
confirm his confessor's warnings; and on January 27, he pronounced the
famous sentence on his nephews. The Cardinal was banished to Civita
Lavinia, the Duke to Soriano, the Marquis to Montebello. The Duchess
took up her abode with her court in the little village of Gallese. It
was here that the episode of her love and tragic end ensued.

Violante found herself almost alone in a simple village among mountains,
half-way between Rome and Orvieto, surrounded indeed by lovely forest
scenery, but deprived of all the luxuries and entertainments to which
she was accustomed. Marcello and Diana were at her side, the one eager
to pursue his hitherto hopeless suit, and the other to further it for
her own profit. One day Marcello committed the apparent imprudence of
avowing his passion. The Duchess rejected him with scorn, but disclosed
the fact to Diana, who calculated that if she could contrive to
compromise her mistress, she might herself be able to secure the end she
had in view of marrying Domiziano. In the solitude of those long days of
exile the waiting-woman returned again and again to the subject of
Marcello's devotion, his beauty, his noble blood and his manifold good
qualities. She arranged meetings in the woods between the Duchess and
her lover, and played her cards so well that during the course of the
fine summer weeks Violante yielded to Marcello. Diana now judged it wise
to press her own suit forward with Domiziano. But this cold-blooded
fellow knew that he was no fit match for a relative of the Marchioness
of Montebello. He felt, besides, but little sentiment for his fiery
_innamorata_. Dreading the poignard of the Caraffas, if he should
presume to marry her, he took the prudent course of slipping away in
disguise from the port of Nettuno. Diana maddened by disappointment,
flew to the conclusion that the Duchess had planned her lover's removal,
and resolved to take a cruel revenge. The Duke of Palliano was residing
at Soriano, only a few miles from Gallese. To bring him secret
information of his wife's intrigue was a matter of no difficulty. At
first he refused to believe her report. Had not Violante resisted the
seductions of all Rome, and repelled the advances even of the Duke of
Guise? At last she contrived to introduce him into the bedroom of the
Duchess at a moment when Marcello was also there. The circumstances were
not precisely indicative of guilt. The s