Meanwhile we may relate what happened to Massimiliano and his bravi.  They escaped, through Garfagnana and Massa, into the territory of Alfonso Malaspina, Marquis of Villafranca and Tresana.  This nobleman, who delighted in protecting outlaws, placed the four men in security in his stronghold of Tresana.  Pietro da Castelnuovo was an outlaw from Tuscany for the murder of a Carmelite friar, which he had committed at Pietrasanta a few days before the assassination of Lelio.  Seventeen years after these events he was still alive, and wanted for grave crimes committed in the Duchy of Modena.  History knows no more about him, except that he had a wife and family.  Of Niccolo da Pariana nothing has to be related.  Ottavio da Trapani was caught at Milan, brought back to Lucca, and hanged there on June 13, 1604, after being torn with pincers.  Massimiliano is said to have made his way to Flanders, where the Lucchese enjoyed many privileges, and where his family had probably hereditary connections.[193] Like all outlaws he lived in perpetual peril of assassination.  Remorse and shame invaded him, especially when news arrived that the mistress, for whom he had risked all, was turning to a dissolute life (as we shall shortly read) in her monastery.  His reason gave way; and, after twenty-two years of wandering, he returned to Lucca and was caught.  Instead of executing the capital sentence which had been pronounced upon him, the Signory consigned him to perpetual prison in the tower of Viareggio, which was then an insalubrious and fever-stricken village on the coast.  Here, walled up in a little room, alone, deprived of light and air and physical decency, he remained forgotten for ten years from 1615 to 1625.  At the latter date report was made that he had refused food for three days and was suffering from a dangerous hemorrhage.  When the authorities proposed to break the wall of his dungeon and send a priest and surgeon to relieve him, he declared that he would kill himself if they intruded on his misery.  Nothing more was heard of him until 1629, when he was again reported to be at the point of death.  This time he requested the assistance of a priest; and it is probable that he then died at the age of sixty-nine, having survived the other actors in this tragedy, and expiated the passion of his youth by life-long sufferings.

[Footnote 193:  I may here allude to a portrait in our National Gallery of a Lucchese Arnolfini and his wife, painted by Van Eyck.]

When we return to Sister Umilia, and inquire how the years had worn with her, a new chapter in the story opens.  In 1606 she was still cloistered in S. Chiara, which indeed remained her home until her death.  She had now reached the age of thirty-four.  Suspicion meanwhile fell upon the conduct of the nuns of S. Chiara; and on January 9, in that year, a rope-ladder was discovered hanging from the garden wall of the convent.  Upon inquiry, it appeared that certain men were in the habit of entering the house and holding