Any nun who kept it in her cell incurred the penalty of excommunication.

In what year Umilia died remains unknown.
* * * * * _The Cenci_.
Shifting the scene to Rome, we light upon a group of notable misdeeds enacted in the last half of the sixteenth century, each of which is well calculated to illustrate the conditions of society and manners at that epoch.

It may be well to begin with the Cenci tragedy.

In Shelley's powerful drama, in Guerrazzi's tedious novel, and Scolari's digest, the legend of Beatrice Cenci has long appealed to modern sympathy.

The real facts, extracted from legal documents and public registers, reduce its poetry of horror to comparatively squalid prose.[196] Yet, shorn of romantic glamour, the bare history speaks significantly to a student of Italian customs.