fell with all the greater intensity on his two unhappy daughters. Their
situation soon became so intolerable, that the elder, contriving to
elude the close supervision under which she was kept, forwarded to
the pope a petition, relating the cruel treatment to which she was
subjected, and praying His Holiness either to give her in marriage
or place her in a convent. Clement VIII took pity on her; compelled
Francesco Cenci to give her a dowry of sixty thousand crowns, and
married her to Carlo Gabrielli, of a noble family of Gubbio. Francesco
was driven nearly frantic with rage when he saw this victim released
from his clutches.

About the same time death relieved him from two other encumbrances: his
sons Rocco and Cristoforo were killed within a year of each other; the
latter by a bungling medical practitioner whose name is unknown; the
former by Paolo Corso di Massa, in the streets of Rome. This came as
a relief to Francesco, whose avarice pursued his sons even after their
death, for he intimated to the priest that he would not spend a farthing
on funeral services. They were accordingly borne to the paupers' graves
which he had caused to be prepared for them, and when he saw them both
interred, he cried out that he was well rid of such good-for-nothing
children, but that he should be perfectly happy only when the remaining
five were buried with the first two, and that when he had got rid of the
last he himself would burn down his palace as a bonfire to celebrate the
event.

But Francesco took every precaution against his second daughter,
Beatrice Cenci, following the example of her elder sister. She was then
a child of twelve or thirteen years of age, beautiful and innocent as
an angel. Her long fair hair, a beauty seen so rarely in Italy, that
Raffaelle, believing it divine, has appropriated it to all his Madonnas,