[Footnote 206:  The balance of probability leans against Isabella in this affair.  At the licentious court of the Medici she lived with unpardonable freedom.  Troilo Orsini was himself assassinated in Paris by Bracciano’s orders a few years afterwards.]

But how should the unfortunate Francesco be entrapped?  They caught him in a snare of peculiar atrocity, by working on the kindly feelings which his love for Vittoria had caused him to extend to all the Accoramboni.  Marcello, the outlaw, was her favorite brother, and Marcello at that time lay in hiding, under the suspicion of more than ordinary crime, beyond the walls of Rome.  Late in the evening of April 18, while the Peretti family were retiring to bed, a messenger from Marcello arrived, entreating Francesco to repair at once to Monte Cavallo.  Marcello had affairs of the utmost importance to communicate, and begged his brother-in-law not to fail him at a grievous pinch.  The letter containing this request was borne by one Dominico d’Aquaviva, alias Il Mancino, a confederate of Vittoria’s waiting-maid.  This fellow, like Marcello, was an outlaw; but when he ventured into Rome he frequented Peretti’s house, and he had made himself familiar with its master as a trusty bravo.  Neither in the message, therefore, nor in the messenger was there much to rouse suspicion.  The time, indeed, was oddly chosen, and Marcello had never made a similar appeal on any previous occasion.  Yet his necessities might surely have obliged him to demand some more than ordinary favor from a brother.  Francesco immediately made himself ready to start out, armed only with his sword and attended by a single servant.  It was in vain that his wife and his mother reminded him of the dangers of the night, the loneliness of Monte Cavallo, its ruinous palaces and robber-haunted caves.  He was resolved to undertake the adventure, and went forth, never to return.  As he ascended the hill, he fell to earth, shot with three harquebusses.  His body was afterwards found on Monte Cavallo, stabbed through and through, without a trace that could identify the murderers.  Only, in the course of subsequent investigations, Il Mancino (February 24, 1582) made the following statements:—­That Vittoria’s mother, assisted by the waiting woman, had planned the trap; that Marchionne of Gubbio and Paolo Barca of Bracciano, two of the Duke’s men, had despatched the victim.  Marcello himself, it seems, had come from Bracciano to conduct the whole affair.  Suspicion fell immediately upon Vittoria and her kindred, together with the Duke of Bracciano; nor was this diminished when the Accoramboni, fearing the pursuit of justice, took refuge in a villa of the Duke’s at Magnanapoli a few days after the murder.