who might undertake the capture or the murder of the proscribed outlaw in concert, and in the event of his being produced alive, a sum of money down.  Osio, apparently, spent some years in exile, changing place, and name, and dress, living as he could from hand to mouth, until the rumor spread abroad that he was dead.  He then returned to his country, and begged for sanctuary from an old friend.  That friend betrayed him, had his throat cut in a cellar, and exposed his head upon the public market place.

Virginia was sentenced to perpetual incarceration in the convent of S. Valeria at Milan.  She was to be ’inclosed within a little dungeon, the door of which shall be walled up with stones and mortar, so that the said Virginia Maria shall abide there for the term of her natural life, immured both day and night, never to issue thence, but shall receive food and other necessaries through a small hole in the wall of the said chamber, and light and air through an aperture or other opening.’  This sentence was carried into effect.  But at the expiration of many years, her behavior justified some mitigation of the penalty.  She was set at large, and allowed to occupy a more wholesome apartment, where the charity of Cardinal Borromeo supplied her with comforts befitting her station, and the reputation she acquired for sanctity.  Her own family cherished implacable sentiments of resentment against the woman who had brought disgrace upon them.  Ripamonte, the historian of Milan, says that in his own time she was still alive:  ’a bent old woman, tall of stature, dried and fleshless, but venerable in her aspect, whom no one could believe to have been once a charming and immodest beauty.’  Her associates in guilt, the nuns of S. Margherita, were consigned to punishments resembling hers.  Sisters Benedetta, Silvia and Candida suffered the same close incarceration.

Lucrezia Buonvisi.

The tale of Lucrezia Buonvisi presents some points of similarity to that of the Signora di Monza.[191]

[Footnote 191:  Storia di Lucrezia Buonvisi, by Salvatore Bonghi, Lucca, 1864.  This is an admirably written historical monograph, based on accurate studies and wide researches, containing a mine of valuable information for a student of those times.]

Her father was a Lucchese gentleman, named Vincenzo Malpigli, who passed the better portion of his life at Ferrara, as treasurer to Duke Afonsono II.  He had four children; one son, Giovan Lorenzo, and three daughters, of whom Lucrezia, born at Lucca in 1572, was probably the youngest.  Vincenzo’s wife sprang from the noble Lucchese family of Buonvisi, at that time by their wealth and alliances the most powerful house of the Republic.  Lucrezia spent some years of her girlhood at Ferrara, where she formed a romantic friendship for a nobleman of Lucca named Massimiliano Arnolfini.  This early attachment was not countenanced by her parents.  They destined her to be the wife of one of Paolo Buonvisi’s