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

At the age of about forty-five he had married a very rich woman,
whose name is not mentioned by any chronicler. She died, leaving him
seven children--five boys and two girls. He then married Lucrezia
Petroni, a perfect beauty of the Roman type, except for the ivory
pallor of her complexion. By this second marriage he had no
children.

As if Francesco Cenci were void of all natural affection, he hated
his children, and was at no pains to conceal his feelings towards
them: on one occasion, when he was building, in the courtyard of his
magnificent palace, near the Tiber, a chapel dedicated to St.
Thomas, he remarked to the architect, when instructing him to design
a family vault, "That is where I hope to bury them all." The
architect often subsequently admitted that he was so terrified by the
fiendish laugh which accompanied these words, that had not Francesco
Cenci's work been extremely profitable, he would have refused to go
on with it.

As soon as his three eldest boys, Giacomo, Cristoforo, and Rocco,
were out of their tutors' hands, in order to get rid of them he sent
them to the University of Salamanca, where, out of sight, they were
out of mind, for he thought no more about them, and did not even send
them the means of subsistence. In these straits, after struggling
for some months against their wretched plight, the lads were obliged
to leave Salamanca, and beg their way home, tramping barefoot through
France and Italy, till they made their way back to Rome, where they
found their father harsher and more unkind than ever.

This happened in the early part of the reign of Clement VIII, famed
for his justice. The three youths resolved to apply to him, to grant
them an allowance out of their father's immense income. They
consequently repaired to Frascati, where the pope was building the
beautiful Aldobrandini Villa, and stated their case. The pope
admitted the justice of their claims, and ordered Francesco, to allow
each of them two thousand crowns a year. He endeavoured by every
possible means to evade this decree, but the pope's orders were too
stringent to be disobeyed.

About this period he was for the third time imprisoned for infamous
crimes. His three sons them again petitioned the pope, alleging that
their father dishonoured the family name, and praying that the
extreme rigour of the law, a capital sentence, should be enforced in
his case. The pope pronounced this conduct unnatural and odious, and
drove them with ignominy from his presence. As for Francesco, he
escaped, as on the two previous occasions, by the payment of a large
sum of money.

It will be readily understood that his sons' conduct on this occasion
did not improve their father's disposition towards them, but as their
independent pensions enabled them to keep out of his way, his rage