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And in that same villa once lived Vittoria Accoramboni, married to Francesco Peretti, nephew of Cardinal Montalto, who built the house, and was afterwards Sixtus the Fifth, and filled Rome with his works in the five years of his stirring reign.
Just then Dame Caterina came in with Father Bonifazio, bringing a draught which he had skilfully compounded, and which the sick man took, and relished better than the Acherontic liquids of the Pyramid Doctor, Splendiano Accoramboni. Antonio Scacciati comes to high honour through the intervention of Salvator Rosa.
When Father Bonifazio came, he looked at the patient, said he very well knew the peculiar signs which death imprints upon the face of one whom he is going to carry off; but there was nothing of the sort to be seen on the face of the unconscious Salvator in his faint, and that help was still possible, and he himself would procure or bestow; only Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni, with his Greek names and diabolical phials, must never cross the doorstep again.
The first one broke, and they had to take another, but Ludovico Orsini did not wince. An hour later his body was borne out with forty torches, in solemn procession, to lie in state in Saint Mark's Church. His men were done to death with hideous tortures in the public square. So ended the story of Vittoria Accoramboni.
Just at this moment Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni was entering the house, when two or three bottles came bang upon his head, smashing all to pieces, whilst the brown liquid ran in streams all down his face, and wig, and ruff.
It was the nephew, then, of this man, whom historians have judged the greatest personage of his own times, that Vittoria Accoramboni married on the 28th of June 1573. For a short while the young couple lived happily together. According to some accounts of their married life, the bride secured the favour of her powerful uncle-in-law, who indulged her costly fancies to the full.
Thus ended this terrible affair, which brought, it is said, good credit and renown to the lords of Venice through all nations of the civilised world. It only remains to be added that Marcello Accoramboni was surrendered to the Pope's vengeance and beheaded at Ancona, where also his mysterious accomplice, the Greek sorceress, perished.
On the other hand, her son thought it would be almost better to see about getting an experienced physician at once, and off he ran there and then to the Spanish Square, where he knew the distinguished Doctor Splendiano Accoramboni dwelt.
As the periwig went meandering like a tangled web, thick and broad, over his back and shoulders, it might well have been taken for the cocoon out of which the beautiful insect had issued. The worthy Splendiano Accoramboni glared through his spectacles, first at the sick Salvator, and then on Dame Caterina, whom he drew to one side.
Furthermore, and without any adequate object beyond that of completing this study of a type he loved, Webster makes him murder his own brother Marcello by treason. The part assigned to Marcello, it should be said, is a genial and happy one; and Cornelia, the mother of the Accoramboni, is a dignified character, pathetic in her suffering.
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