The bombardment of Orsini’s palace began on Christmas Day.  Three of the Prince’s men were killed in the first assault; and since the artillery brought to bear upon him threatened speedy ruin to the house and its inhabitants, he made up his mind to surrender.  ‘The Prince Luigi,’ writes one chronicler of these events, ’walked attired in brown, his poignard at his side, and his cloak slung elegantly under his arm.  The weapon being taken from him he leaned upon a balustrade, and began to trim his nails with a little pair of scissors he happened to find there.’

On the 27th he was strangled in prison by order of the Venetian Republic.  His body was carried to be buried, according to his own will, in the church of S. Maria dell’Orto at Venice.  Two of his followers were hanged next day.  Fifteen were executed on the following Monday; two of these were quartered alive; one of them the Conte Paganello, who confessed to having slain Vittoria, had his left side probed with his own cruel dagger.  Eight were condemned to the galleys, six to prison, and eleven were acquitted.

Thus ended this terrible affair, which brought, it is said, good credit, and renown to the lords of Venice through all nations of the civilized world.  It only remains to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope’s vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.

The Duchess of Palliano.

It was the custom of Italians in the 16th and 17th centuries to compose and circulate narratives of tragic or pathetic incidents in real life.  They were intended to satisfy curiosity in an age when newspapers and law reports did not exist, and also to suit the taste of ladies and gentlemen versed in Boccaccio and Bandello.  Resembling the London letters of our ancestors, they passed from hand to hand, rarely found their way into the printing office, and when they had performed their task were left to moulder in the dust of bookcases.  The private archives of noble families abound in volumes of such tales, and some may still be found upon the shelves of public libraries.  These MS. collections furnish a mine of inexhaustible riches to the student of manners.  When checked by legal documents, they frequently reveal carelessness, inaccuracy, or even willful distortion of facts.  The genius of the Novella, so paramount in popular Italian literature of that epoch, presided over their composition, adding intreccio to disconnected facts, heightening sympathy by the suggestion of romantic motives, turning the heroes or the heroines of their adventures into saints, and blackening the faces of the villains.  Yet these stories, pretending to be veracious and aiming at information no less than entertainment, present us with even a more vivid picture of customs than the Novelle.  By their truthful touches of landscape and incident painting, by their unconscious revelation of contemporary sentiment