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To the fact that she presently became his mistress somewhere about the same time that she became Orso Orsini's wife is due the sudden rise of the House of Farnese. This began with her handsome, dissolute brother Alessandro's elevation to the purple by her lover, and grew to vast proportions during his subsequent and eminently scandalous occupation of the Papal Throne as Paul III.

So morning warms to broad noon, and hunger makes it dinner-time, and the young kinsmen who have strolled abroad come home, one of them with his hand bound up in a white rag that has drops of blood on it, for he has picked a quarrel in the street and steel has been out, as usual, though no one has been killed, because the 'bargello' and his men were in sight, down there near the Orsini's theatre-fortress.

"The Italian dagger," wrote the Prince Regent of Prussia, "has become a fixed idea with Napoleon." Yet it was not only, and perhaps not chiefly, the fear of being assassinated that inclined Napoleon to listen to Orsini's dying prayer, "Free my country, and the blessings of twenty-five million Italians will go with you!"

But, as one of Orsini's most guilty accomplices, a man named Bernard, was still in London, he caused him to be indicted for murder, as having incurred that guilt as accessary to the death of some whom the explosion had killed.

Fired by Orsini's example, Bentivogli also took the offensive, and began by ordering the canonists of Bologna University to go to the churches and encourage the people to disregard the excommunications launched against the city.

Among the royal families of Europe, Orsini's influence was at once understood, but it was thought to have its source in fear. It was remarked how, when the sentence of death was passed, the condemned man, turning to his counsel, whispered the words of Tasso Risorgerò, nemico ognor più crudo, Cenere anco sepolto e spirto ignudo.