Excerpt from The Cenci: A Tragedy, in Five Acts Preface. A Manuscript was communicated to me during my travels 1n Italy, which was copied from the archives of the Cenci Palace at Rome, and contains a detailed account of the horrors which ended in the extinction of one of the no blest and richest families of that city during the Pontificate of Clement VIII in the year 1599. The story is that an old man, having Spent his life in debauchery. And wickedness, conceived at length an implacable hatred towards his chil dren; which showed itself towards one daughter under the form of an incestuous passion, aggravated by every circum stance of cruelty and violence. This daughter, after long and vain attempts to escape from what she considered a perpet ual contamination both of body and mind, at length plotted with her mother-in-law and brother to murder their com mon tyrant. The young maiden who was urged to this tre mendous deed by an impulse which overpowered its horror was evidently a most gentle and amiable being, a creature formedto adorn and be admired, and thus violently thwarted from her nature by the necessity of circumstance and opin ion. The deed was quickly discovered, and, in spite of the most earnest prayers made to the Pope by the highest per sons in Rome, the criminals were put to death. The old man had during his life repeatedly bought his pardon from the Pope for capital crimes of the most enormous and unspeak able kind, at the price of a hundred thousand crowns; the death therefore of his victims can scarcely be accounted for by the love of justice. The Pope, among other motives for severity, probably felt that whoever killed the Count Cenci deprived his treasury of a certain and copious source of rev enue. Such a story, if told so as to present to the reader all the feelings of those who once acted it, their hopes and fears, their confidences and misgivings, their various interests, pas sions and Opinions, acting upon and with each other, yet all conspiring to one tremendous end, would be as a light to make apparent some of the most dark and secret caverns of the human heart. (1 On my arrival at Rome I found that the story of the Cenci was a subject not to be mentioned m Italian society without awakening a deep and breathless interest. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.