Again, as a matter of course, there is an appeal from this sentence to the upper court of the Supreme Tribunal, which appeal comes off after four months’ delay, on the 9th of September, 1859.  The only ground of appeal brought forward is one which, according to our notions of law, should have been brought forward from the first, namely, that the guilt of Volpi is not adequately proved by the unsupported statement of his accomplice Starna, and “that the evidence which corroborates this statement, only constitutes an a priori probability of his guilt.”  The court, however, dismisses this plea at once, on the ground that it is not competent to take cognizance of an argument based on the abstract merits of the case, and therefore confirms the verdict.

On the 25th of November the sentence is submitted to, and approved by, the Pope.  On the 3rd of January, 1860, orders are issued from Rome for the execution to take place.  On the 17th the authorities of Viterbo notify to the prisoner that his last appeal has been dismissed, and “call on the military to lend their support to the execution of the sentence,” and on the following day, two years and eight months after his arrest, Volpi is executed for the murder of Ugolini on the Piazza della Rocca at Viterbo.  On that day, too, appears the first report of his crime and trial.

CHAPTER V.—­continued.  THE “AVANZI” MURDER.

In July, 1859, there were in the Bagnio of Civita Vecchia two galley slaves, Antonio Simonetti and Domenico Avanzi.  Simonetti was a man of thirty, whose life, short as it was, seemed to have been one long career of crime.  He had enlisted at an early age in the Pontifical dragoons, and served for seven years; on leaving the army, he became a porter, and within a few months was guilty of a highway robbery, and sentenced to the galleys for life, then to five years’ hard labour for theft, and again to seven years at the galleys for an attempt to escape, though how the last punishment could be super-added to the first, is a fact I cannot hope to explain.  Of Avanzi nothing is mentioned, except that he was an elderly man condemned to a lengthened term of imprisonment for heavy crimes.  Prisoners, it seems, condemned for long periods, are not sent out of doors to labour at the public works, but are employed within the prison.  Both Simonetti and Avanzi were set to work in the canvas factory, and according to a system adopted in many foreign gaols, they received a certain amount of pay for their labour.  An agreement had been made between the pair, that one should twist and the other spin the hemp; and the price paid for their joint work was to be divided between them in certain proportions.  About a fortnight before the murder this sort of partnership was dissolved at the proposal of Simonetti, and some days after Avanzi made a claim on his late partner for the price of two pounds of hemp not accounted