The Princess still fondly hoped (for women's hopes when fed by their wishes die slowly) that the case was not desperate; she accordingly received her husband with the joy and affection of a faithful wife, and ordered a salute of a hundred cannon to welcome him back. But her trust was doomed to a grievous disappointment. The recent restraints of a foreign residence were speedily compensated by new indulgences, more scandalous, if possible, than before. The buffoonery he had learned on the stage was carried into the streets, through which he sallied in some low disguise, insulting all and sundry, and striking them with the flat of his sword, till frequently obliged to discover himself to the astonished spectators. The time which he could spare from such ribaldry, and from his comedians, was devoted to the stable. Besides driving his own horses, an occupation in those stately days exclusively menial, he performed about them the vilest offices of farrier and stable-boy. At length, in executing a feat, unattempted, perhaps, by subsequent Jehus, that of driving eighteen horses in hand, he galloped over a poor child. This outrage, having reached his father, provoked him, in a fit of passionate indignation, and in forgetfulness of his abdicated powers, to pronounce sentence of exile from Pesaro against the Prince,—an order which, of course, was not enforced. The reserved inanity of the Diary throws no light whatever on the Duke's knowledge or feelings in regard to such occurrences, though the following notices are scarcely reconcileable with his ignorance of one excess of his son's headstrong career.
"1623, February 24. The Duchess went to Urbino for the comedy represented there the following day, and returned on the 26th.
"——, —— 27. The comedy was performed in Castel Durante."[108]
Resuming Passeri's Memoir, to which, although incorrect in many details, we are mainly indebted for this portion of our narrative, we find that the Prince moved to Urbino early in the summer, the company of actors forming the strength of his court, and there nightly performed with them, amid the acclamations of a rabble audience. With a view to conciliate his mother-in-law, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany, whose interference in behalf of her insulted daughter he had too good reason to anticipate, he prepared a magnificent coach and six costly horses as a present to her. On the 28th of June he acted as usual on the stage, the part which he sustained on this occasion being (according to Galuzzi) the degraded one of a pack-horse, carrying about the comedians on his back, and finally kicking off a load of crockery with which he was laden. About midnight he retired to rest, worn out by this buffoonery, after giving orders for a chasse next day at Piobbico near Castel Durante. At dawn, hearing the clatter of the horses which were setting out for Florence, he rose and gave some orders from the window in his night dress. In the morning his attendants, surprised at not being summoned, and fearing he would be too late to attend mass before noon, knocked in vain at his door. Three hours passed away in doubts and speculations, and at length two of the courtiers burst open the door, exclaiming "Up, your Highness, 'tis time for the comedy!" But for him that hour was past; the well-known and welcome words fell on an ear whose silver cord was broken. His body was under the icy grip of death; his spirit had fled to its awful account.
The body was discovered on its back, bleeding at the nose and mouth, the left hand under the pillow, one leg drawn up, and the mattress much discomposed. The Prince always slept alone, and locked himself in, without retaining any attendants in the adjoining apartment. Six strangers, with the Tuscan accent, had been observed about the palace the day before. From these circumstances, and from his odious character, suspicions of foul play were entertained; but most of the accounts which I have seen attribute his death to apoplexy, resulting probably from premature and excessive dissipation. The body was opened, and no traces of poison were detected; but a small quantity of water was found upon the brain, which the medical report attributed to over indulgence in athletic sports, and to the bushy thickness of his hair, which he greatly neglected. The most probable explanation of this catastrophe was that of the astrologer Andrea Argoli, who, after an elaborate calculation of the Prince's horoscope, pronounced him to have died of an epileptic fit, induced by the chill of the morning air; a conclusion dictated, no doubt, by medical experience, rather than by the study of those malignant planetary influences which the quack thought fit to quote as decisive of the question.
On the first alarm the Princess had rushed to the room, breaking through all opposition, and exclaiming, "What! my Lord is ill, and am I not to see him?" but finding him dead, she fainted. The chief anxiety of all was how to break the dire news to the "way-worn and way-wearied" Duke, who was suffering from a severe fit of gout, in his wonted retirement. At length, the Bishop of Pesaro, nominally head of the court, undertook the painful mission. Having arrived at Castel Durante, he sent in by a chamberlain a sealed note, containing the words "The Prince is dead." This the Duke at first desired to be laid aside till later, with his other letters; but on being told that the Bishop was in attendance, he read it without emotion, and exclaimed in Latin, "The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." This Christian stoicism might seem inexplicable, but from the context of the narrative, which states that to the lamentations of his attendants, he without a sigh or tear supplied consolation, assuring them that the event was irremediable, and one for which he had long been prepared; and adding, with Sancho Panza-like resignation, "He who lives badly comes to a bad end, and one born by a miracle dies by violence." He then with perfect self-command gave directions necessary for the funeral, and for the exigencies of the government; and at supper ordered the reading of Italian and Spanish books of edification to be continued as usual.
In an age when omens were observed with a heathenish superstition, the people began to take note of these before they considered the recent event in its practical and political bearings. It was now recollected that the journey of the Prince and Princess, on their return from their marriage, had been interrupted, before they reached Pesaro, by an extraordinary tempest, which flooded their capital, and delayed their public entry. On the day month preceding Federigo's death, a flight of brown moths passed over Urbino towards the sea, darkening the air for hours. Again, during the fatal night, a strange and threatening cloud was seen by many to cast its gloomy shadow over that city, and, after successively assuming the forms of the eagle of Montefeltro, and the tree of Rovere, to disperse and vanish in the direction of Rome. Others saw serpents and similar monstrous apparitions wrestling in mid-air, and contributed their quota to the strange saws and marvellous instances which fed the popular craving for prodigies. It is scarcely necessary to observe that these facts, or at all events their application, had called for no remark until men's minds were filled with the catastrophe of which they were then interpreted as the precursors. But it may be thought singular that those who busied themselves in finding out ominous coincidences omitted to note a circumstance chronicled by the often-cited Diary, that, on the 21st of August, 1604, nine months before the Prince's birth, lightning struck the Duke's chamber at Castel Durante. Thunder on the left was hailed by the Roman augurs as lucky, but this visitation seems too violent for a good omen.
The honours of a royal sepulture were lavished on one whose life had been thus unworthy of his station; and such was the magnificence displayed in the trappings of death that, besides many overcharged narratives of the funeral, portraits were multiplied of the Prince laid out in his richly-silvered robes. He was deposited in a tomb which Francesco Maria had destined for himself in the grotto or crypt of the metropolitan cathedral, with an inscription to the following purport:—