BEATRIGE GENGI In an obscure part of Rome, near the Ghetto, or quarter of the Jews, stands a large gloomly pile, which, though partially modernized, retains all the characteristics of a feudal palace. Its foundations are seated upon the ruins of an ancient amphitheatre, and its walls were probably raised, like most of the palaces in the Christian capital, at the expense of some noble monument of antiquity. A darkly tragic history, involving the fate of one of the oldest Patrician families of Rome, and ending in its extinction, is connected with this building. It is a tale of suffering and of blood-one in which the most monstrous perversity distorts the best and gentlest feelings of human nature, and converts a mild and lovely woman into a parricide. The record of such crimes, though it raises a thrill of breathless horror, conveys at the same time a useful lesson. To watch the effects of a continued career of vice, or to trace the warping of an ardent but virtuous mind under the pressure of accumulated and unheard-of injuries, is to study a most important page in the book of mankind. Precept is powerful, no doubt; but when a terrific picture is placed before us, and the fearful reality brought home to the senses, it leaves a much more lasting impression. Such is my object in relating the events which follow; as well as to show, that even the production of a positive good is not only no justification for crime, but that such crime leads to certain and irreparable evil. Here we have a daughter inflicting death upon an iniquitous father; and while a deep and soulstirring interest is awakened by the sorrows and sufferings of Beatrice Cenci, a horror of the crime she committed will ever couple her name with infamy. Count Nicolo Cenci was the last living descendant of an ancient and noble house. In early life he had entered the ecclesiastical state, risen to the prelacy, and held, under the Pontificate of Pius V., the office of Treasurer to the Apostolic chamber. Being at length the sole survivor of his race, he resolved, though somewhat advanced in years, to return to secular life and marry-a practice not uncommon in the sixteenth century. At his death he left an only son, the inheritor of his honors and immense wealth. This son, the child of his old age and of his ambition, was Francesco Cenci, the father of Beatrice. The curse of iniquity seemed entailed upon him from his cradle. He was one of those human monsters which, bad as man may be, are the anomalies of the species; woe and despair were the ministers to his enjoyments, and the very atmosphere tainted with his breath was pregnant with death or misfortune to all who came within its influence. Before he had reached his twentieth year, he married a woman of great beauty and noble birth, who, after bearing him seven children, and while still young, died a violent and mysterious death. Very soon after, he married Lucrezia Strozzi, by whom he had no family. Count Francesco Cenci was a stranger to every redeeming virtue of the human heart. His whole life was spent in debauchery, and in the commission of crimes of the most unspeakable kind. He had several times incurred the penalty of death, but had purchased his pardon from the papal govern ment at the cost of a hundred thousand Roman crowns for each offence. As he advanced in years, he conceived a most implacable hatred towards his children. To get rid of his three eldest sons, he sent them to Spain, where he kept them without even the common necessaries of life. They contrived, however, to return to Rome, and throw themselves at the feet of the Pope, who compelled their unnatural father to make them an allowance suitable to their rank. Their eldest sister, cruelly tortured at home, likewise succeeded, though with great difficulty, in making an appeal to the Pontiff, and was removed from her father's roof. She died a few years after. When these victims of Count Cenci's hatred were thus placed beyond his reach, the vindictive old man became almost frantic with passion. But his wife, his daughter Beatrice, his son Bernardino, and a boy still younger, were yet in his power; and upon them he resolved to wreak his vengeance by the infliction of tenfold wretchedness. To prevent Beatrice from following her sister's example, he shut her up in a remote and unfrequented room of his palace, no longer the seat of princely magnificence and hospitality, but a gloomy and appalling solitude, the silence of which was never disturbed, except by shouts of loose revelry, or shrieks of despair. So long as Beatrice remained a child, her father treated her with extreme cruelty. But years sped on; the ill-used child grew up into a woman of surpassing loveliness, and the hand raised to fell her to the earth, became gradually relaxed, and at last fell powerless. The soul of the stern father had melted before her matchless beauty, and his ferocious nature seemed subdued. But it was only the deceitful calm that precedes the tempest. |