"cenci11" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dumas Alexandre)

His youth was spent under popes so occupied with the schism of Luther
that they had no time to think of anything else. The result was,
that Francesco Cenci, inheriting vicious instincts and master of an
immense fortune which enabled him to purchase immunity, abandoned
himself to all the evil passions of his fiery and passionate
temperament. Five times during his profligate career imprisoned for
abominable crimes, he only succeeded in procuring his liberation by
the payment of two hundred thousand piastres, or about one million
francs. It should be explained that popes at this time were in great
need of money.

The lawless profligacy of Francesco Cenci first began seriously to
attract public attention under the pontificate of Gregory XIII. This
reign offered marvellous facilities for the development of a
reputation such as that which this reckless Italian Don Juan seemed
bent on acquiring. Under the Bolognese Buoncampagno, a free hand was
given to those able to pay both assassins and judges. Rape and
murder were so common that public justice scarcely troubled itself
with these trifling things, if nobody appeared to prosecute the
guilty parties. The good Gregory had his reward for his easygoing
indulgence; he was spared to rejoice over the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew.

Francesco Cenci was at the time of which we are speaking a man of
forty-four or forty-five years of age, about five feet four inches in
height, symmetrically proportioned, and very strong, although rather
thin; his hair was streaked with grey, his eyes were large and
expressive, although the upper eyelids drooped somewhat; his nose was
long, his lips were thin, and wore habitually a pleasant smile,
except when his eye perceived an enemy; at this moment his features
assumed a terrible expression; on such occasions, and whenever moved
or even slightly irritated, he was seized with a fit of nervous
trembling, which lasted long after the cause which provoked it had
passed. An adept in all manly exercises and especially in
horsemanship, he sometimes used to ride without stopping from Rome to
Naples, a distance of forty-one leagues, passing through the forest
of San Germano and the Pontine marshes heedless of brigands, although
he might be alone and unarmed save for his sword and dagger. When
his horse fell from fatigue, he bought another; were the owner
unwilling to sell he took it by force; if resistance were made, he
struck, and always with the point, never the hilt. In most cases,
being well known throughout the Papal States as a free-handed person,
nobody tried to thwart him; some yielding through fear, others from
motives of interest. Impious, sacrilegious, and atheistical, he
never entered a church except to profane its sanctity. It was said
of him that he had a morbid appetite for novelties in crime, and that
there was no outrage he would not commit if he hoped by so doing to
enjoy a new sensation.