stood at the opposite side of the street in the shade, knocked at his step-mother’s door. Her maid looked out of the window and asked who was there, and on his answering _friends_, recognized his voice, and drew the cord of the latch. Bartolomeo and the assassins rushed upstairs with such fury that Serzelli and Carlini, who were sitting with Caterina, suspected some evil thing and, springing to their feet, fled by another staircase on to the roof, whence they got into a neighbouring house. Caterina was then murdered by these infamous executors of the barbarous cruelty of the Duchess, together with her maid, probably to prevent her giving evidence. After this the bodies of these two most unfortunate women were cut to pieces, and carried into a carriage. Parts of the bodies were thrown into a well, others into the Arno, where they were found the next day, but the head of Caterina was taken to the Duchess.... On Sundays and holidays she used to send to the Duke’s room a silver basin covered by a fair cloth, containing collars, cuffs and such like things. But on this first of January the present was of a different kind. Taking the head of poor Caterina, which still preserved the beauty which had been the cause of her death, Donna Veronica placed it in the basin, covered it with the usual cloth, and sent it by her waiting-woman, who knew naught of the business, into the Duke’s room. When he rose and lifted the cloth to take his clean linen, let his horror be imagined at seeing so pitiful a sight. Knowing full well that his wife had done this deed, he would have no more of her, and they say he never was seen to smile again.” The account then describes how Bartolomeo Canacci was beheaded, while the real assassin, the Duchess, went unpunished, and ends with the reflection, “Whoso foregathers with great people is the last at the table and the first at the gallows.” The last of the Canacci family died in 1777, and the palace now belongs to the Commune of Florence. PALAZZO CANIGIANI _Via de’ Bardi. Nos. 22, 24._