But Peretti remained to all appearance
unmoved. And when it came to his turn to
approach the Pope for the transaction of business
connected with the offices he held, and the Pope,
again giving way to tears, condoled with him,
and promised him that every effort should be
made to discover the murderers, and bring them
to condign punishment, the cardinal, humbly
thanking his holiness for his sympathy,
besought him to make no further inquiry into the
matter, lest many who were innocent might be
made miserable by another's crime. For his
own part, he assured the Pope, that, from the
bottom of his heart, he pardoned whosoever had
done the deed. And, thus saying, he passed on
to speak, with imperturbable calm, of the ordinary
business in hand.

It is curious to observe in all this the total
ignorance manifested by all parties concerned,
and by the historians who narrate the facts, of
the most elementary notions of the duties and
functions of civil government.

The Pope, we are told, expressed the utmost
astonishment, on quitting the Consistory, at the
Cardinal di Montalto's admirable self-possession;
and, in talking to his nephew, the Cardinal di
San Sisto, said, shaking his head, "Truly that
man is a great friar!"

But the poor cardinal had to undergo yet
another severe ordeal. Roman etiquette
required that all the great personages of the city,
lay as well as ecclesiastic, should severally visit
him to condole with him on his loss. Among
the rest Prince Orsini would, of course, have
to discharge this ceremonial obligation.
Information had been carefully obtained when
this trying visit was to be paid, and at the time
named for it the receiving-room and ante-
chamber of the cardinal were filled to overflowing
with prelates and others, who, on one
pretence or another, had gone thither, "every one
of them," says the historian, "with the deliberate
purpose of minutely observing the first
meeting of those two faces, judging that the
cardinal would scarcely succeed in hiding, at
least at the first moment of meeting, some slight
alteration of countenance." But the reverend
and illustrious concourse of spies were
disappointed; for Montalto received the prince with
his usual suavity of manner and cheerful
countenance, and discoursed with him on indifferent
subjects as he had often done before. So that
Orsini, on leaving him, "said laughingly to his
companions, as he got into his carriage, 'Faith,
it is true enough that the old fellow is a very
great friar!'"

It is worth observing that these reiterated
testimonies to the old cardinal's consummate
mastery of the art of dissimulation are triumphantly
related by his biographer, a monk of his
own order, as bright gems in the coronet of
virtues with which he crowns his hero. And he
assures us, moreover, that the circumstances of
this tragic affair, which in less masterly hands
might easily have turned to the considerable
injury of his chances of the papacy, were, by his
consummate skill, so managed as to materially
strengthen them. "For," said the cardinals
to themselves, "evidently this man, either by
nature can not, or from policy will not, do
injury to anyone, however grievously he maybe
offended."

In the mean time his liberal conduct to
Vittoria also won him golden opinions in all
quarters. The young widow had to return to
her father's house, and might have been sent
back as empty-handed as she had come from it.
But Montalto made her a present of all the gold
and silver plate, the costly dresses and jewels
which he and her late husband had purchased
for her.

While Rome was still admiring this
liberality, and within a very few days after the
murder, the attention of the city was excited,
and the feelings of the cardinal outraged anew
by the news that Vittoria and her mother had
left their home, and sought shelter in the palace
of Prince Orsini. The gross indecency and
audacity of such a step seems irreconcilable
with any other supposition, than that they were
both guilty accomplices in the murder of Peretti.
It was said that they sought in the palace of
Orsini, which was inviolable by the police, an
asylum from any pursuits which might be directed
against them on account of Peretti's death.
And the action of the executive authorities in
such matters was so little regulated by reason
and justice, was so arbitrary and uncertain, at
one moment inflicting the most violent punishments
without a shadow of real evidence against
the accused, and at another permitting the most
notorious crimes to remain unnoticed, that the
mere circumstance of persons, however
innocently connected by chance of time and place
with any crime, seeking to put themselves out
of the way of the officers of justice was no
presumption of their guilt. But the Cardinal di
Montalto was abundantly able to have protected
Vittoria and her mother in these circumstances
if they had needed it. And, again, why had her
mother more cause to fear the pursuit of the
police than her father? But, in any case, it is
impossible not to feel that the roof of the
Prince Orsini ought to have been, under the
circumstances, the very last in Rome to which
Vittoria should have had recourse.

Rome heard without surprise, though not
without much disgust, that a marriage was
forthwith to take place between Prince
Orsini, Duke of Bracciano, and Vittoria
Accoramboni. But, in the mean time, the officers of
justice, stimulated, it would seem, by the
extraordinary character of the circumstances, had,
despite the Cardinal di Montalto's desire to the
contrary, commenced a more than usually active
investigation into the murder. The bargello
succeeded in capturing the Mancino. And on
his second examination, on the 24th of February,
1582, "without the application of torture," this
man confessed that the murder had been plotted
by the mother of Vittoria and the maid Caterina,
and had been committed by some free lances in
the employ of a certain noble, "whose name is
for good and sufficient reasons not recorded."