But Baracconi has discovered a story or a legend about one of them who lived a hundred years later, and who somehow was by that time lord of Cære, or Ceri, again, as some of his ancestors had been. It was when Charles the Fifth came to Rome, and there were great doings; for it was then that the old houses that filled the lower Forum were torn down in a few days to make him a triumphal street, and many other things were done. Then the Emperor gave a public audience in Rome, and out of curiosity the young Titta dell' Anguillara went in to see the imperial show. There he saw that a few of the nobles wore their caps, and he, thinking himself as good as they, put on his own. The Grand Chamberlain asked him why he was covered. 'Because I have a cold,' he answered, and laughed. He was told that only Grandees of Spain might wear their caps in the Emperor's presence. 'Tell the Emperor,' said the boy, 'that I, too, am a Grandee in my house, and that if he would take my cap from my head, he must do it with his sword,' and he laid his hand to the hilt of his own. And when the Emperor heard the story, he smiled and let him alone.
Many years ago, before the change of government, the Trasteverine family, into whose possession the ancient tower had come, used to set out at Christmas-tide a little show of lay figures representing the Nativity and the Adoration of the Kings, in the highest story of the strange old place, and almost in the open air. It was a pretty and a peaceful sight. The small figures of the Holy Family, of the Kings, of the shepherds and their flocks, were modelled and coloured with wonderful skill, and in the high, bright air, with the little landscape as cleverly made up as the figures, it all stood out clearly and strangely lifelike. There were many of these Presepi, as they were called, in Rome at that season, but none so pretty as that in the gloomy old tower, of which every step had been washed with blood.
Of all tales of household feud and vengeance and murder that can be found in old Rome, one of the most terrible is told of the Mattei, whose great palace used to stand almost opposite the bridge of Saint Bartholomew, leading to the island, and not more than two hundred yards from the Anguillara tower. It happened in the year 1555, about the time when Paul the Fourth, of inquisitorial memory, was elected Pope, thirty years before the sons of the Massimo murdered their father's unworthy wife, and Orsini married Victoria Accoramboni; and the deeds were done within the walls of the old house of which a fragment still remains in the Lungaretta, with a door surmounted by the chequered shield of the Mattei.