Osio was still at large.  On December 20, he addressed a long letter to the Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, in which he vainly attempted to defend himself, and throw the blame on his associates.  It is a loathsome document, blending fulsome protestations and fawning phrases, with brutal denouncements of his victims, and treacherous insinuations.  One passage deserves notice.  ‘Who was it,’ he says, ’who suggested my correspondence with Virginia?  The priest Paolo Arrigone, that ruin of the monastery!  The Canon Pisnato, who is now confessor to the nuns of Meda; in his house you will find what will never be discovered in mine, presents from nuns, incitements to amours, and other such things.  The priest Giacomo Bertola, confessor of the nuns of S. Margherita; who was his devotee?  Sacha!—­and he stayed there all the day through.  These men, being priests, are not prosecuted; they are protected by their cloth, forsooth!  It is only of poor Osio that folk talk.  Only he is persecuted, only he is a malefactor, only he is the traitor!’ Arrigone, as a matter of fact, was tried, and condemned to two years’ labor at the galleys, after the expiration of which term he was not to return to Monza or its territory.  This seems a slight sentence; for the judges found him guilty, not only of promoting Osio’s intrigue with Virginia, by conducting the correspondence, and watching the door during their interviews in the parlor, but also of pursuing the Signora himself with infamous proposals.

In his absence Osio was condemned to death on the gibbet.  His goods were confiscated to the State.  His house in Monza was destroyed, and a pillar of infamy recording his crimes, was erected on its site.  A proclamation of outlawry was issued on April 5, 1608, under the seal of Don Pietro de Acevedo, Count of Fuentes, and governor of the State of Milan, which offered ’to any person not himself an outlaw, or to any commune, that shall consign Gianpaolo Osio to the hands of justice, the reward of a thousand scudi from the royal ducal treasury, together with the right to free four bandits condemned for similar or less offenses; and in case of his being delivered dead, even though he shall be slain in foreign parts, then the half of the aforesaid sum of money, and the freedom of two bandits as above.  And if the person who shall consign him alive be himself an outlaw for similar or less offenses, he shall receive, beside the freedom of himself and two other bandits, the half of the aforesaid sum of money; and in the case of his consignment after death, the freedom of himself and of two other bandits as aforesaid.’  I have recited this Bando, because it is a good instance of the procedure in use under like conditions.  Justice preferred to obtain the culprit alive, and desired to receive him at honest hands.  But there was an expectation of getting hold of him through less reputable agents.  Therefore they offered free pardon to a bandit and a couple of accomplices,