of the murder of one of his own followers.  Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing Miserere in the great hall of the palace.  The murderers surprised him with a shot from one of their harquebusses.  He ran, wounded in the shoulder, to his sister’s room.  She, it is said, was telling her beads before retiring for the night.  When three of the assassins entered, she knelt before the crucifix, and there they stabbed her in the left breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage insults if her heart was pierced.  Her last words were, ‘Jesus, I pardon you.’  Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with seventy-four stiletto wounds.

The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria and Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to Venice.  Meanwhile it appears that both corpses were laid out in one open coffin for the people to contemplate.  The palace and the church of the Eremitani, to which they had been removed, were crowded all through the following day with a vast concourse of the Paduans.  Vittoria’s dead body, pale yet sweet to look upon, the golden hair flowing around her marble shoulders, the red wound in her breast uncovered, the stately limbs arrayed in satin as she died, maddened the populace with its surpassing loveliness. ‘Dentibus fremebant.’ says the chronicler, when they beheld that gracious lady stiff in death.  And of a truth, if her corpse was actually exposed in the chapel of the Eremitani, as we have some right to assume, the spectacle must have been impressive.  Those grim gaunt frescoes of Mantegna looked down on her as she lay stretched upon her bier, solemn and calm, and, but for pallor, beautiful as though in life.  No wonder that the folk forgot her first husband’s murder, her less than comely marriage to the second.  It was enough for them that this flower of surpassing loveliness had been cropped by villains in its bloom.  Gathering in knots around the torches placed beside the corpse, they vowed vengeance against the Orsini; for suspicion, not unnaturally, fell on Prince Lodovico.

The Prince was arrested and interrogated before the court of Padua.  He entered their hall attended by forty armed men, responded haughtily to their questions and demanded free passage for his courier to Virginio Orsini, then at Florence.  To this demand the court acceded; but the precaution of waylaying the courier and searching his person was very wisely taken.  Besides some formal despatches which announced Vittoria’s assassination, they found in this man’s boot a compromising letter, declaring Virginio a party to the crime, and asserting that Lodovico had with his own poignard killed their victim.  Padua placed itself in a state of defense, and prepared to besiege the palace of Prince Lodovico, who also got himself in readiness for battle.  Engines, culverins, and fire-brands were directed against the barricades which he had raised.  The militia was called out and the Brenta was strongly guarded.  Meanwhile the Senate of S. Mark had despatched the Avogadore, Aloisio Bragadin, with full power, to the scene of action.  Lodovico Orsini, it may be mentioned, was in their service:  and had not this affair intervened, he would in a few weeks have entered on his duties as Governor for Venice of Corfu.