recognised his voice and drew the cord of the latch; when Bartolomeo and the assassins rushed up the stairs with such fury that Lorenzo Serzelli and Messer Vincenzio Carlini, who were talking with Caterina, suspected some evil thing and springing to their feet had hardly time to fly by another staircase on to the roof, whence they escaped to a neighbouring house, before the ruffians with naked swords in their hands appeared at the door. Poor Caterina was then murdered by these infamous executors of the barbarous cruelty of the Duchess, together with her maid probably to prevent her from giving evidence. After which the bodies of these two most unfortunate women were cut into pieces, carried silently out of the house and put into a carriage; parts of the bodies were thrown down a well at the corner of Via de’ Pentolini and Piazza Sant’ Ambrogio, others were thrown into the Arno and found next day, all save the head of poor Caterina which those murderers carried to the Duchess for the full execution of this Tragedy as shall be hereafter set forth. “All these particulars were seen by Carlini and Serzelli, who with hot haste had left the house where they had taken refuge and knocked at one opposite to Caterina’s where lived a well-known woman commonly called Aunt Nannina, because three of the most famous courtezans of our day were her nieces. The door was at once opened to them, and from a slit in the window of an upstairs room they saw and heard what I have related. “Now the Duchess, by one of her waiting-women, was used to send to the Duke’s room on Sundays and other holidays a silver basin covered with a fair cloth, containing collars, cuffs and such-like things which the Duke was wont to change on those days. But on this the 1st of January, a day sacred to Christians because on it is celebrated the circumcision of Our Lord and also because according to the rites of the Roman Church it is the beginning of the year, the present sent was of a different nature. Taking the head of poor Caterina, which though bloodless and cold yet preserved the beauty which had been the cause of her death, the Duchess placed it in the basin, covered it with the usual cloth and sent it by her waiting-woman, who knew nought of the business, into the Duke’s room. When he rose and lifted the cloth to take his clean linen, let his horror be pictured when he saw such a pitiful sight. It is not my intention to describe here the lamentations, the sorrow, the anguish and the tears shed over the lifeless head of his love; they can be better imagined than writ with a pen. Knowing full well that his wife had done this deed he would have no more of her, and for many a long year refused to be where she was. When she came to Florence, he left for one of his villas, or for Rome where he had large estates; and if she went to a villa or to Rome, incontinently he returned to Florence.