A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

That done, the conspirators hastily called together the leading men in the city, to decide on the steps to be taken for the government of it henceforth. For the Orsi, wealthy, numerous, influential, and violent as they were, had no hope of being permitted to make themselves lords of Forlì. They proposed, therefore, the step which promised the next best chances for their own greatness and power,—to lay Forlì at the feet of the Pontiff. This was frequently a measure adopted in those days in similar circumstances. The crime committed would be thus wiped out; the family of the murdered prince, and the neighbouring princes, who might be disposed to profit by the occasion, would be kept at bay; and, since the Church could only hold and govern and tax distant dependencies by means of governors and lieutenants, who so likely to step into such profitable places, as the powerful citizen who had gained the new state for the Holy Father?

THE CARDINAL SAVELLI.

The frightened council at once assented to the proposal, and sent off that same night messengers to the Cardinal Savelli, who was residing as governor for the Church at Cesena, a city about twelve miles to the south of Forlì.

Meanwhile some of the partisans of the Orsi had thrown the body of Girolamo from the window into the Piazza; and while the citizens were busied in displaying everywhere the papal flag, amid cries of "Chiesà! Chiesà!" the mob having torn every rag of clothing from the corpse, dragged it through the streets of the city, till certain friars took it from them, and placed it in the sacristy of their church.

The Cardinal Savelli did not at all like the proposal made to him; and lost some important time, before, "being unwilling to have it said that the Church had lost a chance through his cowardice," he at last made up his mind to accept it. On arriving at Forlì, his first step was to visit Catherine in the Orsi Palace. An historical novelist would have little difficulty, and better historical warranty than often suffices for such purposes, in presenting his readers with a sufficiently striking and picturesque account of that interview. Catherine, the historians tell us, was, as we might expect from our knowledge of her, haughty, unbroken, and unbending; the Cardinal, as we might also expect from our knowledge of his kind, smooth-tongued, courteous, full of regrets and talk about his sacred duty to Holy Mother Church. This is all history tells us. But it is enough. The imagination has no difficulty in filling up the sketch.

But at the conclusion of his courteous talking, the Cardinal intimated, that it would be better, that the Countess and her family should for the present find a safe shelter in a small but strong building over the St. Peter's gateway, under the care of trusty citizens, to be named by his Eminence. And Catherine was far from unwilling to acquiesce in the change. For though the accommodation proposed to her was materially of the most wretched, yet she naturally preferred any prison to the home of her husband's murderer; and the Cardinal's hint, that the gateway prison might be a safer asylum for her and her children than the palace of the Orsi, was, she felt, more than a mere pretext.

That night, accordingly, the 15th of April, Catherine and her family were marched through the city, escorted by a troop of guards, bearing torches, from the Orsi palace to her new prison. The little procession of prisoners consisted of twelve persons; the Countess herself, her mother (who is now mentioned for the first time since her daughter's birth, and who may in all probability be supposed to have become Catherine's inmate at the time of her settling permanently in Forlì after the death of Sixtus), her sister Stella, her six children, a natural son of the Count, named Scipio, and two nurses. They were received with all courtesy by the three citizens to whose keeping the Cardinal had consigned them; but suffered much from the insufficiency of the small room to hold them.

BEFORE THE FORTRESS.

The next day Cardinal Savelli and the conspirators summoned Feo, the Governor of Ravaldino, to deliver up the fortress; and on his refusal, they brought Catherine from her prison to the foot of the walls, and there compelled her to give her own orders viva voce to the Castellano to do so. On his showing himself on the ramparts, she not only commanded, but implored him with every possible appearance of earnestness, to save her life by delivering up the fort. In all probability the Countess and her Castellano perfectly understood each other. In any case he knew Catherine's character, and had, moreover, the orders which had reached him by Ercolani for his guidance. At all events, he replied to her commands and entreaties by a steady refusal; and the baffled conspirators had to take her back to the gate-house.

"Ah, Madame Catherine," said Giacomo Ronchi, one of three who had murdered the Count, and who stood by her side as she parleyed with Feo, "if you were really in earnest, he would yield. But it is you, who do not wish him to obey your words; and it makes me long to lay you dead where you stand with a thrust of this partizan through the body!"