There, before the assembled crowd, Gian Antonio Ghetti, the principal of them, declared to the magistrates that Feo had been put to death by the express order of Catherine and Octavian; and the others loudly confirmed his assertion.[132] There does not seem to have been the slightest attempt made to test the truth of these declarations by separately examining and cross-questioning the assassins. But it is remarkable, that the _Auditor_, Catherine's chief magistrate, does not appear to have considered this explanation at all impossible. On the contrary, he found himself in a position of difficulty, evidently fearing, that if he proceeded at once on the supposition, that these men were to be treated as murderers and traitors, his zeal might possibly turn out to have been expended on the wrong side. In this difficulty "the worthy magistrate" beckoned from the crowd a young man whom he could trust, and with a few whispered words despatched him in all haste to the fortress, dexterously holding law in leash the while. [Sidenote: WAS CATHERINE GUILTY?] In a very short time the messenger returned, and our "worthy magistrate" was himself again. It was all right. Murther was murther. Law was to "have its course;" and quartering alive, dragging at horses tails, and other ingenious devices of the sort were to be resorted to, according to the most approved precedents. But are these orders from the citadel as efficacious in disproving the truth of Gian Antonio's assertion before the tribunal of history, as they were in making the Auditor's course clear before him? The learned Litta, in his great work on the Families of Italy thinks not. He writes,[133] "Feo was killed by conspirators in 1495: if, indeed, it were not Catherine herself who ordered his death." But we know that suspicion of crime becomes morbidly active in those whose duties make them continually conversant with criminals; and in estimating the value of Litta's impressions, great allowance must be made for the mental bias of one who spent his life in chronicling the Fasti of the noble families of Italy.