The next night she threw herself on her bed without undressing.  At the accustomed hour the door opened, and the nocturnal spectacle reappeared.  This time, Lucrezia Petroni was among the women who passed before Beatrice’s door; violence had compelled her to undergo this humiliation.  Beatrice was too far off to see her blushes and her tears.  Francesco pointed out her stepmother, whom she had lacked for in vain the previous evening; and as she could no longer make any opposition, he led her, covered with blushes and confusion, into the middle of this orgy.

Beatrice there saw incredible and infamous things....

Nevertheless, she resisted a long time:  an inward voice told her that this was horrible; but Francesco had the slaw persistence of a demon.  To these sights, calculated to stimulate her passions, he added heresies designed to warp her mind; he told her that the greatest saints venerated by the Church were the issue of fathers and daughters, and in the end Beatrice committed a crime without even knowing it to be a sin.

His brutality then knew no bounds.  He forced Lucrezia and Beatrice to share the same bed, threatening his wife to kill her if she disclosed to his daughter by a single word that there was anything odious in such an intercourse.  So matters went on for about three years.

At this time Francesco was obliged to make a journey, and leave the women alone and free.  The first thing Lucrezia did was to enlighten Beatrice an the infamy of the life they were leading; they then together prepared a memorial to the pope, in which they laid before him a statement of all the blows and outrages they had suffered.  But, before leaving, Francesco Cenci had taken precautions; every person about the pope was in his pay, or hoped to be.  The petition never reached His Holiness, and the two poor women, remembering that Clement viii had on a farmer occasion driven Giacomo, Cristaforo, and Rocco from his presence, thought they were included in the same proscription, and looked upon themselves as abandoned to their fate.

When matters were in this state, Giacomo, taking advantage of his father’s absence, came to pay them a visit with a friend of his, an abbe named Guerra:  he was a young man of twenty-five or twenty-six, belonging to one of the most noble families in Rome, of a bold, resolute, and courageous character, and idolised by all the Roman ladies for his beauty.  To classical features he added blue eyes swimming in poetic sentiment; his hair was long and fair, with chestnut beard and eyebrows; add to these attractions a highly educated mind, natural eloquence expressed by a musical and penetrating voice, and the reader may form some idea of Monsignor the Abbe Guerra.

No sooner had he seen Beatrice than he fell in love with her.  On her side, she was not slow to return the sympathy of the young priest.  The Council of Trent had not been held at that time, consequently ecclesiastics were not precluded from marriage.  It was therefore decided that on the return of Francesco the Abbe Guerra should demand the hand of Beatrice from her father, and the women, happy in the absence of their master, continued to live on, hoping for better things to come.