to ride without stopping from Rome to Naples, a distance of forty-one
leagues, passing through the forest of San Germano and the Pontine
marshes heedless of brigands, although he might be alone and unarmed
save for his sword and dagger. When his horse fell from fatigue, he
bought another; were the owner unwilling to sell he took it by force;
if resistance were made, he struck, and always with the point, never the
hilt. In most cases, being well known throughout the Papal States as a
free-handed person, nobody tried to thwart him; some yielding through
fear, others from motives of interest. Impious, sacrilegious, and
atheistical, he never entered a church except to profane its sanctity.
It was said of him that he had a morbid appetite for novelties in crime,
and that there was no outrage he would not commit if he hoped by so
doing to enjoy a new sensation.

At the age of about forty-five he had married a very rich woman, whose
name is not mentioned by any chronicler. She died, leaving him seven
children--five boys and two girls. He then married Lucrezia Petroni,
a perfect beauty of the Roman type, except for the ivory pallor of her
complexion. By this second marriage he had no children.

As if Francesco Cenci were void of all natural affection, he hated his
children, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings towards them: on
one occasion, when he was building, in the courtyard of his magnificent
palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St. Thomas, he remarked to
the architect, when instructing him to design a family vault, "That
is where I hope to bury them all." The architect often subsequently
admitted that he was so terrified by the fiendish laugh which
accompanied these words, that had not Francesco Cenci's work been
extremely profitable, he would have refused to go on with it.