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"Then you are a doctor too," said Salvator, in a faint, melancholy tone. "No," answered the young gentleman, while a bright colour came to his cheek, "my dear, renowned master, I am not a doctor like Signor Splendiano Accoramboni; I am a surgeon.
Bembo's sonnets were the fit reading for Lucrezia Borgia; pastorals by Guarini the dramatic amusements of Rannuccio Farnesi; if Vittoria Accoramboni and Francesco Cenci read anything besides their prayerbook or ribald novels, it was some sugary "Aminta" or "Pastor Fido:" their own tragedies by Webster and Shelley they could never have understood.
On the other side marched Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni in his great wig, which covered the whole of his back, so that to look at him from behind there appeared to be a huge head walking along on two little legs.
Thus, Eleanora di Toledo was hacked to pieces by her husband Pietro de' Medici, and his sister Isabella was strangled by her husband the Duke di Bracciano, with the consent of her brothers. Isabella dead, the duke was free to marry Vittoria Accoramboni, in no way his equal in rank, for he was an Orsini, who was a woman totally devoid of all moral sense if she is to be judged by her acts.
She had once read how the murderers of Vittoria Accoramboni had been torn with red-hot pincers and otherwise grievously tortured, and how knives had been thrust deep into their breasts just where the heart was not, but near it, and how they had died hard, for they had lived more than half an hour with the knives in them, and at the last had been quartered alive.
The refuse heap at the Pyramid of Cestius is the seedfield of Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni, and he cultivates, dresses, and manures it most assiduously. And that is why he is called the Pyramid Doctor.
You had hardly left the house when Signor Splendiano Accoramboni, who had learned God knows in what way that his bosom-friend, Capuzzi, had broken his right leg in the night, drew near in all solemnity, with a surgeon. Your bandage and the entire method of treatment you have adopted with Signor Pasquale could not fail to excite suspicion.
But I shall now tell you, circumstantially, my dear Antonio, what happened in Capuzzi's house when you had gone out. Scarcely had you got down-stairs, when Signor Splendiano Accoramboni who, heaven knows how, had found out that his bosom friend Capuzzi had broken his leg in the night came, in the most solemn state, to see him, bringing a surgeon with him.
In these circumstances the morning had come, when the door opened with much noise, and the celebrated doctor, Signor Splendiano Accoramboni, entered. If it had not been for the great heart-sorrow over Salvator's mortal sickness, the two girls, petulant and merry as they were, would have laughed loud and long at the doctor's marvellous appearance.
I am wedded to history, to the Past, to women like Lucrezia Borgia, Vittoria Accoramboni, or that Medea da Carpi, for the present; some day I shall perhaps find a grand passion, a woman to play the Don Quixote about, like the Pole that I am; a woman out of whose slipper to drink, and for whose pleasure to die; but not here! Few things strike me so much as the degeneracy of Italian women.
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