Lucrezia had just arrived and was having her hair shorn.  At his request, the novice herself appeared—­’a young woman, tall and pale, dressed in a nun’s habit, with a crown upon her head.’  She declared herself to be ’Madonna Lucretiina Malpigli, widow of Lelio Buonvisi.’  The priest who had conducted her reception, affirmed that ’the gentle lady, immediately upon her husband’s death, conceived this good prompting of the spirit, and obeyed it on the spot.’

For the moment, Lucrezia, whom in future we must call Sister Umilia, had to be left unmolested.  The judges returned to the interrogation of their prisoners.  Vincenzo del Zoppo and his wife Pollonia, in whose house the lovers used to meet, were tortured; but nothing that implied a criminal correspondence transpired from their evidence.  Then the unlucky Carli was once more put to the strappado.  He fell into a deep swoon, and was with difficulty brought to life again.  Next his son, a youth of sixteen years, was racked with similar results.  On June 7, they resolved to have another try at Vincenzo da Coreglia.  This soldier had been kept on low diet in his prison during the last week, and was therefore ripe, according to the judicial theories of those times, for salutary torments.  Having been strung up by his hands, he was jerked and shaken in the customary fashion, until he declared his willingness to make a full confession.  He had been informed, he said, that Massimiliano intended to assassinate Lelio by means of his three bravi, Pietro da Castelnuovo, Ottavio da Trapani, and Niccolo da Pariana.  He engaged to stand by and cover the retreat of these men.  It was Carli, and not Massimiliano, who had made overtures to him.  On being once more tortured, he only confirmed this confession.  Carli was again summoned, and set upon the ‘she-goat,’ with heavy weights attached to his feet.  The poor wretch sat for two hours on this infernal machine, the sharp edges and spikes of which were so contrived as to press slowly and deeply upon the tenderest portions of his body.[192] But he endured this agony without uttering a word, until the judges perceived that he was at the point of death.  Next day, the 8th of June, Coreglia was again summoned to the justice-chamber.  Terrified by the prospect of future torments, and wearied out with importunities, he at last made a clean breast of all he knew.  It was not Carli, but Massimiliano himself, who had engaged him; and he had assisted at the murder of Lelio, which was accomplished by two of the bravi, Ottavio and Pietro.  Coreglia said nothing to implicate Sister Umilia.  On the contrary he asserted that she seemed to lose her senses when she saw her husband fall.

[Footnote 192:  Campanelia, who was tortured in this way at Naples, says that on one occasion a pound and a half of his flesh was macerated, and ten pounds of his blood shed.  ’Perduravi horis quadraginta, funiculis arctissimis ossa usque secantibus ligatus, pendens manibus retro contortis de fune super acutissimum lignum qui (?) carnis sextertium (?) in posterioribus mihi devoravit et decem sanguinis libras tellus ebibit.’  Preface to Atheismus Triumphatus.]