There is, however, not the slightest reason to suspect that anything of the kind was the case. And it may even be doubted whether the death was welcome to Bianca. It is true, that any hope she may have conceived of being able to secure the succession for Don Antonio,—and she seems at times to have formed schemes of the kind,—was rendered possible only by this event. Barring any offspring which might afterwards be born either to Ferdinando or Pietro, Antonio was now the only (reputed) descendant of the house. But, on the other hand, the death of his son threw the Grand Duke into a deeper gloom of melancholy and discontent than ever. And Francesco was not an easy man to live with under such circumstances.
His repining often took the form of reproaches to Bianca for her childlessness. And, assuredly, never were reproaches less deserved, if an earnest desire for offspring, that would continue hoping against hope, were any title to escape from them. Not a nostrum–monger was to be heard of on either side of the Alps, that the unhappy woman did not summon to her aid. With untiring perseverance and ever renascent credulity, she essayed their prescriptions, whether mystical or physical, with the result, it would seem, of very seriously impairing her constitution. More than once she deceived her husband, and very possibly was deceived herself, by false announcements of her pregnancy. If, as it is stated,[207] she made Francesco believe that she had suffered once or more from miscarriage during these years, she was of course guilty of deceit, however much she may have been imposed upon by the impostors who surrounded her. And the only intelligible motive of such falsehood would seem to have been the notion, that by thus keeping alive her husband's hope of having an heir by her, the danger that he might perhaps seek to break his marriage with her, in order to unite himself with some more fortunately circumstanced wife, might be avoided.
The principal residence of the unhappy couple at this period was the solitary villa of Pratolino. The name will be familiar to most travellers in Italy; for the pretty park on the slope of the Apennine, with its magnificent view of the vale of Arno and distant Florence far beneath it, has become a favourite haunt of Florentine pic–nic parties. And the bright green glades, cool mountain air, and fine old trees, make the scenery more like that of English pleasure grounds than perhaps any other spot in Italy.
But the dwelling in which the moody Duke hid himself and his wife from the hate–envenomed eyes of his subjects, exists no longer. Of the pleasure villa, the title of which, like that of many another pleasure scheme, turned out to be so mocking a satire on the designer of stone and mortar happiness, not one block remains upon another. It was situated about eight miles from Florence, in the direction of Bologna, a distance sufficient to secure to Francesco perfect retirement, and that total neglect of all state business and cares in which he indulged during the latter years of his reign. The contemporary accounts[208] which have come down to us of the manner of life he led, shut up in his solitary villa with the unhappy Bianca, are so strange, as to warrant us in concluding that some touch of insanity must have mingled in the disastrously combined elements of his mental and physical constitution. The extraordinary excesses recorded as having been habitual to him are more like the freaks of a madman than the indulgences of a voluptuary.
DUCAL HABITS.
We hear of his abuse of distilled waters and elixirs; his "immoderate and pernicious familiarity[209] with oil of vitriol, and too frequent use of distilled cinnamon water." His food was always compounded with "hot spices, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and pepper." He would take before eating, during his meal, and after it, a quantity of raw eggs, filled with the hot red pepper of Spain. He was fond of the most indigestible kinds of food, and would eat to excess of raw garlic and capsicums, raw onions, radishes, leeks, and roots of various sorts, with enormous quantities of the strongest cheese. His wine was always of the most fiery and heady sorts. And when he had heated himself beyond endurance with inordinate quantities of such burning liquors and spices, and loaded his stomach with such crudities, he would drink large quantities of iced water, plunge his head and hands in snow, and go to bed in iced sheets. This latter practice was his constant habit; and the writer of the letter cited above says that he did so in imitation of Prospero Colonna and other men of note of that time,—a not improbable trait in the character of a man who refused to mourn his child's death in imitation of another great man.
The characteristic manifestations of his mental condition the while, were, if unhappily less extraordinary, yet quite as unhealthy as his bodily habits. A dark heavy melancholy, ever and anon blazing out in fits of savage ferocity, seemed to grow upon him from day to day. And, upon the whole, he must at this period have been as dangerous and intolerable an animal to live with as can well be imagined.
And if now, once again, we suppose Bianca to cast up her accounts and "take stock" of her position, shut up in this lonely Apennine villa, with a half–mad savage for her mate, conscious of having earned the bitterest hatred and execrations of an entire people, and tormented with unceasing repining for the one unattainable blessing, which should have realised, or seemed to realise, some gain out of so much sin and suffering,—perhaps she may have begun to have misgivings as to the measure and value of her "success."