The Podesta issued a proclamation inviting evidence, under the menace of decapitation and confiscation of goods for whomsoever should be found to have withheld information.

To this call a certain Orazio Carli, most imprudently, responded.

He confessed to having been aware that Massimiliano was plotting the assassination of somebody--not Lelio; and said that he had himself facilitated the flight of the assassins by preparing a ladder, which he placed in the hands of a _bravo_ called Ottavio da Trapani.

This revelation delivered him over, bound hand and foot, to the judicial authorities, who at the same time imprisoned Vincenzo da Coreglia, the soldier present at the murder.
Massimiliano and his men meanwhile had made their way across the frontier to Garfagnana.

Their flight, and the suspicions which attached to them, rendered it tolerably certain that they were the authors of the crime.