Italian Chronicles

by Stendhal

  When the pope made this great declaration, it may have been four o’clock in the morning (that is, the morning of Saturday, September 11). All night long, workers had been busy on the piazza of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, making the necessary preparations for the cruel tragedy. However, all the required copies of the death sentence were not ready until five o’clock, and so it was only at six that they could announce the fatal news to the poor unfortunates, who had been sleeping peacefully.

  The girl, for the first few moments, could not summon up the strength even to get dressed. She cried out with long, piercing shrieks as she dressed herself all alone in the most fearful despair.

  “How is this possible? Oh God!” she cried. “Must I die suddenly like this?”

  Lucrezia Petroni, on the other hand, uttered only the most appropriate things; first she prayed on her knees, and then exhorted her daughter to come with her to the chapel, where they could both ready themselves for the great passage from life to death.

  The phrase restored all her tranquillity to Beatrice; just as extravagantly and impulsively as she had behaved at first, now she was as wise and reasonable as her stepmother, who had recalled that great soul to herself. From that moment on, she was a mirror of steadfastness, admired by all of Rome.

  She requested a notary to make her will, and the request was granted. She asked for her body to be buried in San Pietro in Montorio; she left 300,000 francs to the Stimate (the nuns of the Order of the Stigmata of Saint Francis); the sum was to provide for a dowry for fifteen poor girls. This example touched Signora Lucrezia, who also made her will, calling for her body to be taken to San Giorgio; and she left 500,000 francs as alms for that church, as well as making other pious legacies.

  At eight o’clock they both confessed, attended Mass, and received Holy Communion. But before leaving for Mass, Signora Beatrice reflected that it would not be right to appear on the scaffold, before the eyes of the people, wearing the rich clothes that she had on. She called for two dresses, one for herself and the other for her mother. These dresses were like those worn by the nuns, with no ornaments at the neckline or shoulders and simply pleated, with wide sleeves. The mother’s dress was of plain black cotton; that of the daughter was of blue taffeta, tied around the waist with a thick rope.

  When the dresses were brought in to them, Beatrice, who had been on her knees, got up and said to Signora Lucrezia:

  “My mother, the hour of our passion is here; it is time for us to prepare, to put on these other clothes; let us render each other the service of helping to get dressed for one last time.”

  On the piazza of the Ponte Sant’Angelo, a great scaffold had been erected, with a block and a mannaja (a kind of guillotine). At eight o’clock in the morning, the company of the Misericordia carried their great crucifix to the prison gates. Giacomo Cenci was the first to leave his prison; he knelt devoutly on the threshold, said his prayer, and kissed the holy wounds on the crucifix. He was followed by Bernardo Cenci, his younger brother, who also had his hands tied and a small plank fixed over his eyes. The crowd was enormous, and there was some tumult because of a vase that had fallen from a window almost onto the head of one of the penitents, who was holding aloft a lighted torch beside the banner.

  Everyone was staring at the two brothers when suddenly and unexpectedly the fiscal of Rome came forward, saying:

  “Signor Bernardo, our lord has granted you the grace of life; submit to accompany your relatives, and pray to God for them.”

  At that moment, the two confortatori removed the plank from before his eyes. The executioner situated Giacomo Cenci in the cart and removed his clothing, so that he could submit to the tenailler.25 When the executioner turned to Bernardo, he verified the signature of the reprieve, untied him, and removed the manacles, and because he had already been undressed in readiness for the torture, the executioner now helped him up onto the cart and put a rich woolen cloak with a golden stripe over his shoulders (people said it was the same one that Beatrice had given to Marzio after the act in the Petrella fortress). The immense crowd in the street, at the windows, and on the rooftops were all moved by this, and a low, deep murmuring could be heard as people passed on the news that the child had found mercy.

  The chanting of the Psalms now began, and the procession moved slowly past the Navona Piazza on the way to the Savella prison. When they arrived at the gate, the banner halted, the two women came out, made their adoration at the foot of the holy crucifix, and then proceeded, one after the other, on foot. They were dressed as previously described, their heads covered by large taffeta veils that hung down almost to the waist.

  Signora Lucrezia, in her status as widow, wore a black veil and black velvet slippers without heels, as is the custom.

  The daughter’s veil was of blue taffeta, like her dress; she also had a large veil of silver cloth over her shoulders, a violet cloth underskirt, and white velvet slippers, elegantly laced and fastened with crimson straps. Walking along in those clothes, she evinced a singular grace, and tears sprang to every eye when people saw her advancing slowly in the rear of the procession.

  Both women had their hands free, but their arms were tied close to their bodies so that each of them could carry a crucifix; each held hers close to her eyes. The sleeves of their dresses were very wide so that their arms could be glimpsed, covered by tight sleeves down to the wrists, as is the custom here.

  Signora Lucrezia, whose heart was the less steady, was weeping almost continuously; the young Beatrice, on the other hand, showed great courage, and, turning her eyes toward each church as the procession passed them, she went down on her knees for a moment and said in a firm voice, “Adoremus te, Christe!”

  Meanwhile, the poor Giacomo Cenci was being torn by the pincers on the cart, where he showed great perseverance.

  The procession could cross the piazza of the Ponte Sant’Angelo only with great difficulty, so great was the number of carriages and the size of the crowd. They first took the women into the chapel that had been prepared there, and then brought in Giacomo Cenci.

  Young Bernardo, wearing his striped cloak, was taken directly to the scaffold, at which point everyone thought that he was going to die and that he had not been pardoned. The poor child was so terrified that he fainted as soon as he set foot on the scaffold. They revived him with cold water and sat him down facing the mannaja.

  The executioner went to seek out Signora Lucrezia Petroni; her hands were tied behind her back, and she no longer had a veil on her shoulders. She appeared on the piazza accompanied by the banner, her head covered with a black taffeta veil; there, she made her reconciliation with God, and she kissed the holy wounds. They told her to leave her slippers on the pavement; because she was a heavy woman, she ascended the scaffold with difficulty. When she got there and they removed her black taffeta veil, she suffered greatly at being seen with her shoulders and chest uncovered; she looked down at herself, then looked at the mannaja, and, in a sign of resignation, she gently shrugged her shoulders; tears streaming from her eyes, she said, “Oh my God! … And you, my brothers, pray for my soul.”

  Not knowing what she was supposed to do, she asked Alessandro, the primary executioner, how to proceed. He told her to sit astride the block, as if on horseback. But this seemed offensive to her sense of modesty, and it took her a long time to manage it. (The details that follow are tolerable to the Italian public, who like to know things with the greatest precision possible; it will suffice the French reader to know that the modesty of this poor woman meant that she injured her bosom; the executioner showed the head to the people and then wrapped it up in the veil of black taffeta.)

  While they were putting the mannaja in order for the daughter, a scaffold overloaded with curious onlookers collapsed, and a great number of people were killed. They thus appeared in God’s sight before Beatrice did.

  When Beatrice saw the banner return to the chapel to come for her, she said in a strong voice:

  “Is my mother then really dead?�
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  They told her yes; she threw herself down on her knees before the crucifix and prayed fervently for her soul. Then she spoke aloud, and at length, to the crucifix:

  “Lord, you have returned for me, and I will follow you with a good will, never despairing of your mercy for my enormous sin,” etc.

  She then recited several Psalms and prayers, all in praise of God. When at last the executioner appeared before her with a rope, she said:

  “Tie up this body that must be punished, and untie this soul that must come to immortality and eternal glory.”

  Then she arose, said her prayer, left her slippers at the foot of the stair and, mounting onto the scaffold, she swiftly passed one leg over the block, posed her neck beneath the mannaja, and arranged her body perfectly so as to avoid being touched by the executioner. She did all this so quickly that she avoided the moment when the taffeta veil would be removed and the public would see her shoulders and chest. The blow of the blade was a long time in coming because of some delay. During this time, she called out the names of Jesus Christ and the most holy Virgin.26 At the fatal moment, her body made a great jolting motion. Poor Bernardo Cenci, who all this time was seated on the scaffold, fell into a faint a second time, and this time it took the confortatori a full half hour to revive him. Then Giacomo Cenci was brought up onto the scaffold; but here we must pass over the details, which are too atrocious. Giacomo Cenci was bludgeoned (mazzolato).27

  Bernardo was immediately removed to the prison; he had a high fever, and they bled him.

  As for the poor women, each was placed in her coffin and set down a few steps from the scaffold, near the statue of Saint Paul that is the first one to the right on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. They remained there until four fifteen in the afternoon. Around each coffin burned four candles of white wax.

  Then, together with what was left of Giacomo Cenci, they were brought to the palazzo of the consul of Florence. At nine fifteen in the evening,28 the body of the daughter, dressed again in her own clothes and crowned with a profusion of flowers, was taken to San Pietro in Montorio. Her beauty was ravishing; an observer would have said she was asleep. She was interred before the great altar and the Transfiguration by Raphael. Accompanying her were fifty large candles burning, and all the Franciscans in Rome.

  Lucrezia Petroni was taken, at ten o’clock in the evening, to the church of San Giorgio. All during this tragedy, the crowds were innumerable; as far as the eye could see, the streets were packed with carriages and people, and the curious were everywhere—scaffolding, windows, rooftops. The sun was so hot that day that many people passed out. An enormous number came down with fever; and when everything was finished, about one forty-five in the morning, and the crowd had dispersed, many people were suffocated, and others trampled by horses. The number of deaths was very considerable.

  Signora Lucrezia Petroni was rather short, and although she was fifty years old, she was still very good-looking. She had very beautiful features, with a small nose, black eyes, and a very white complexion with beautiful tints; her hair was not thick, and it was chestnut in color.

  Beatrice Cenci, who inspires infinite regret, was just sixteen; she was petite; her figure was pretty and rounded, and her cheeks were dimpled, so when she was dead, one would have said she was asleep, and even that she was laughing, which she frequently did when she was alive. She had a small mouth, and her hair was blond and naturally curly. As she walked to her death, those blond curls drifted forward over her face, giving her a certain grace and arousing compassion.

  Giacomo Cenci was short, stout, with a white complexion and a black beard; he was just about twenty-six when he died.

  Bernardo Cenci closely resembled his sister, and because he wore his hair long as she did, when he appeared on the scaffold many people thought it was she.

  The sun had been so hot that many of the spectators of the tragedy died overnight, among them Ubaldino Ubaldini, a young man of rare beauty who had always enjoyed perfect health. He was the brother of Signor Renzi, well known in Rome. Thus, the shades of the Cenci went into the afterlife well accompanied.

  Yesterday, which was Tuesday, September 14, 1599, the penitents of San Marcello employed their privilege to free Signor Bernardo Cenci from prison; he is obliged to pay 400,000 francs to the Santissima Trinita del Ponte Sisto.

  (Added in another hand): From him are descended the Francesco and Bernardo Cenci who are alive today.

  The famous Farinacci, who saved the life of the young Cenci through his stubborn determination, has published his pleadings. He includes only an extract from pleading number 66, which he presented to Clement VIII in favor of the Cenci. This pleading, in Latin, occupies six large pages, which I cannot copy here, regretfully; it reveals the way people thought in 1599; it seems very sensible to me. Long after the year 1599, Farinacci, sending his papers to the printer, added a note to the pleading relating to the Cenci: Omnes fuerunt ultimo supplicio affecti except Bernardo qui ad triremes cum bonorum confiscatione condemnatus fuit, ac etiam ad interessendum aliorum morti prout interfuit.29 The end of this Latin note is touching, but I imagine that the reader is tired of this long story.

  THE DUCHESS OF PALLIANO

  PALERMO, JULY 22, 1838

  I am by no means a naturalist, and my command of Greek is mediocre; my main aim in traveling in Sicily was not to observe phenomena associated with Mount Etna, nor was it to shed light for myself or for others on what the ancient Greek authors had to say about Sicily. My main goal was to see beautiful sights, and such sights are considerable in this extraordinary place. People say it resembles Africa, but the one thing certain for me is that it resembles Italy only in its overwhelming passions. You could say that, for many Sicilians, the word impossible does not exist for them when they are inflamed by love or by hatred, and the hatred in this beautiful country never arises out of mere money matters.

  I note that in England and even more in France, people refer to “Italian passion,” meaning that unbridled passion which one finds in the Italy of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In our day, that fine passion is dead, entirely dead, at least among those classes who have let themselves become tainted by French customs and the ways things are done in Paris or London.

  I know of course that one can say that, around the time of Charles V (1530), Naples, Florence, and even Rome tended to imitate the ways of the Spanish; but those grand, noble social customs—did they not arise out of the infinite respect that any man worthy of the name ought to have for the movements of his soul? Far from excluding energy, they exaggerated it, whereas the primary maxim of those smug dolts who imitated the Duke de Richelieu1 around 1760 was to never appear to be moved by anything. And isn’t it the maxim of the English “dandies,” which is the model to be imitated now in Naples in preference to the French version, to appear to be bored by everything, superior to everything?

  Thus, that “Italian passion” is no longer to be found, nor has it been for over a century now, in the better society of this country.

  In order to get some idea of this “Italian passion” that our novelists speak about with such assurance, I found it necessary to study history; and I found that the great histories written by men of talent, though often quite majestic, say almost nothing about such details. They tend to take note only of the follies committed by kings or princes. I had recourse to the histories of individual cities, but I was frightened off by the sheer abundance of materials. A given small town will proudly present you with its history in three or four quarto volumes, along with seven or eight manuscript volumes, the latter all but indecipherable, strewn with abbreviations, representing the letters in odd ways, and, at the most interesting moments, filled with local idioms and figures of speech that would be unintelligible to anyone living twenty leagues away. This is because, throughout that beautiful Italy, where love has given rise to so many tragic events, only three cities—Florence, Siena, and Rome—speak the same way that they write; everywhere else, the written speech differ
s from the spoken by a hundred leagues.

  What is called “Italian passion,” that is, the kind of passion that seeks out its own satisfaction, as opposed to the kind that seeks out only making our neighbors admire us—this Italian passion arose along with the early Renaissance, in the twelfth century, and it died out, at least among polite society, somewhere around 1734. That was when the Bourbons came to reign in Naples in the person of Don Carlos, the son of a Farnese whose second marriage was to Philippe V that melancholic grandson of Louis XIV, so intrepid when the bullets flew, so bored, and so passionate about music. We know that for twenty-four years, the sublime castrato Farinelli2 sang to him the same three favorite songs—always the same ones.

  Someone with a philosophic turn of mind might find the details about a passion in Rome or Naples interesting, but I must say that nothing seems more absurd to me than those novels which give their characters Italian names. Can we not agree that the passions change with every hundred leagues northward traveled? Is love the same thing in Marseilles that it is in Paris? The most we can say is that countries that have long been under the same form of government all have a sort of external resemblance in their social customs.

  Landscapes, passions, music—they all change with every three or four degrees north. A Neapolitan landscape would appear absurd in Venice if it had not already been agreed that nature is beautiful around Naples. In Paris, we go one better, believing that every forest and field is absolutely the same in Naples and Venice, and we wish that Canaletto, for example, would have used the very same colors that Salvator Rosa did.

  But the height of absurdity is when we find an English lady, endowed with all the perfections of her island home, feeling forbidden to write about “hatred” and “love” in that island of hers: thus, we see Madame Anne Radcliffe giving Italian names and grand passions to the characters of her celebrated novel The Italian; or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents?.3