Leaving Florence in the middle of a hot summer’s day, the course to Cafaggiuolo was trying to her horses—one indeed fell and died on the way—an evil omen for poor Eleanora! As night was coming on she reached the villa, more dead than alive with fright, and accompanied only by two faithful ladies of her household. To their surprise the house appeared to be deserted: there were no lights in the windows, and no one seemed to be about.
The great doors were wide open, and with much trepidation the Princess mounted the marble steps. The door of every room also was open and the arras pulled aside, but nowhere could she see or hear her husband. Very uncanny everything felt, the silence was almost suffocating, and the darkness threw weird shadows athwart her and her companions.
At the entrance of the room, which she deemed to be Piero’s—they had never cohabited there, or indeed anywhere, she knew not where he slept—Eleanora paused, affrighted. She had heard a rustle! she had seen something! it was a hand held beyond the arras!—and there was a poignard within its grasp!
E’er she could cry out or take a step backwards, a sudden, savage blow struck her breast—she fell!—stabbed to death! The hand was the hand of Piero de’ Medici!
Eleanora was dead! Her life’s blood crimsoned, in a gory stream, the marble lintel, and Piero gazed at the victim of his desertion, lust, and hate—he was mad!
Kneeling upon his knees in the hellish darkness, he tried to stanch that ruddy stream. Then he laved his hands in her hot blood and conveyed some to his raging lips! Reason presently asserted herself; and, throwing himself prostrate along the floor, he banged his head, thereupon calling out in a frenzy of remorse for mercy for his deed!
“God of Heaven,” he pleaded, “judge between my wife and me—I vow that I will do penance for my deed, and never wed again.”
The short summer’s night early gave place to the dawn—not rosy that sad morning, but overcast—gloom was in everything. Piero was still praying by his dead wife’s side when the tramp of footsteps upon the gravel outside the house fell upon his ears. Swiftly he ran and closed the entrance-doors, and then calling in a creature of his—a base-born medico—he ordered him to make, there and then, an autopsy of the corpse, and report according to his express instructions.
“Death from heart failure and the rupture of an artery,” such ran the medical certificate of death! Miserable Eleanora di Piero de’ Medici was buried ceremoniously in the family vault at San Lorenzo, and Piero made a full confession to his brother, the Grand Duke.
Francesco counselled him to leave Florence at once, and seek a temporary home at the Court of Madrid, where he might inform his kinsman by marriage—the King of Spain—of the truth about Eleanora’s death. It was reported at the time that Piero gained possession of Eleanora’s child, Cosimo, and took him away with him from Florence; but what became of the unfortunate little fellow no one ever knew—probably he went home to his mother in Paradise just to be out of the way!