638
The Green Bag.
living only Lucrezia, Giacomo, Beatrice and Bernardo. The Government of Naples were deter mined to ferret out the truth of the affair and finally succeeded in effecting the capture of Marzio who, having been put to the torture, made full confession. The Pontifical au thorities were immediately notified and pend ing Marzio's arrival at Rome, the conspirators were arrested. Olimpio, the other bravo, it may be ob served in passing, was killed at Cantelice, a village near Petrella, in the May of 1599, by two brothers, Marco Tullio and Cesare Busone. The Roman police apparently had strong doubts as to their ability to make out a case against the accused, for vo find that the Cenci were treated with a considerable de gree of leniency. At first, Lucrezia and Beatrice were merely kept at home under guard. This lasted only a short time and soon they were sent to rejoin Giacomo and Bernardo. These were held in custody, at the prison of Corte Savella and later at the Castle of St. Angelo, from which a subse quent transfer was had to the first place of detention. Guerra from a friend at court, received early notice of his intended arrest and suc ceeded in making his escape. His subse quent career is involved in mystery. One account is that he finally drifted into a Swiss regiment in the service of Henry IV. of France. When Marzio arrived, the Roman authori ties caused him to be re-examined. The assassin thereupon retracted his previous confession and expired under new tortures without having added anything to the proofs already accumulated. His conduct has fur nished the basis for a touching story of the hopeless love which he is said to have cher ished for Beatrice. While possibly this is true, we should not adopt a theory merely because it may chance to finely blend with a romantic tale of a romantic epoch. In any
event, Marzio would not have been the first nor was he the last bravo faithful to his em ployers even to the end. The trial of the Cenci was now to begin. English and American legal writers are in the habit of concisely stating the difference between Continental systems of criminal procedure and those in vogue in their respective countries, by saying that the former is in quisitorial, the latter accusatorial. The one assumes a criminal to be guilty until his in nocence is established, the latter proceeds upon the theory of innocence until guilt be proven. Of the former, torture is of course, a logical concomitant, though it is only fair to say that no application of it might be made until some indication of culpability ex isted. Hence, a trial" in that day resembled not so much an attempt to discover the truth, as a test of endurance on the part of the prisoner. And yet the procedure adopted in the infliction of pain either for the purpose of extorting a confession or otherwise, was most minutely prescribed by a law which laid down the judges' duties with much par ticularity. Torture was divided into the "ordinary " and the "extraordinary." The latter was only made use of in cases where a grave crime had been committed and reason able grounds existed for believing the accused guilty. There were in Rome at that epoch numerous methods of torture of which the best known and most frequently employed were that of the "watch" and the "rope." The principle of the former is very ancient and consists simply in not permitting the sufferer to sleep. The prisoner was seated on a small chair with diamond-shaped seat and back. His legs were bound to keep them from touching the ground and his arms fast ened from behind to a rope running to the ceiling. The executioner's assistants pre vented the accused from sleeping, and at intervals rocked him backward and forward on the narrow seat, or raised him to a short height after which he was dropped upon it. The nerve-racking quality of this diabolical