Galluzzi, however, prints the following letter, which, he says, was written on the 16th of October to Rome. He does not tell us who was the writer:

"The Grand Duke has had two tertian fevers, one after the other; in fact, continual fever. He suffers from extreme thirst. Nevertheless, thus far the symptoms are favourable as regards ultimate recovery. The fourth and seventh days have been favourable, with a good perspiration; and we hope to go on improving. But he must not commit any imprudence; and, its being autumn, makes us fear that the recovery may be tedious. Therefore, cause prayers to be put up; and the more, because the Grand Duchess also has nearly the same malady, which increases the Grand Duke's sufferings, because she cannot attend him, and see to nursing him."

If this is a genuine letter, written on the 16th, it would be worth something towards deciding the question in favour of the first hypothesis. But it seems to be contradicted by a passage in that very curious document, previously cited, which Guerrazzi has printed at length in the notes to his "Isabella Orsini." This author himself, assuredly not prejudiced in favour of the Medici, speaking of this very important letter, which he states to be previously inedited, and generally unknown, and which is preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, under the No. 10, O 74, says, "From this letter, evidently written by a person, satirical rather than otherwise, and but little favourable to the Medici, and especially to Francesco and to Bianca Capello, we learn how false is the notion that they were poisoned. The kind of life led by them needed no aid to insure their speedy death, since it is easy to perceive that they were in the habit of poisoning themselves daily."

THE DUKE'S DEATH.

I cannot, however, admit that the document in question proves any such thing. It proves certainly that its author, Giovanni Vettorio Soderini, writing apparently very shortly after the events, professes to accept, as it should seem, the statement officially put forth. Yet even this is hardly clear from the very strange manner and phraseology of the letter, which in its opening sentences appears intended to convey some meaning to the writer's correspondent, which is hidden from us. It runs thus: "When in these last days Death rode on his thin and ill–conditioned charger to invest himself with the title of Great.[217] Death obtained at Rome the title of Great, and having obtained this most indecent title, he rode in haste towards Poggio–a–Cajano, and there with irresistible force and equal valour, assaulted the Great Tuscan of Florence and Siena, and brought him down on the 19th of October, 1587, four and a half hours after sunset, and at forty–seven years of age deprived him of life, after strange and unusual writhings,[218] and much howling and groaning. He remained speechless from after dinner till the moment when he was seized with a most burning fever. Signor Pandolfo de' Bardi and Signor Troiano Boba have always asserted that he had caught a pleurisy from too great and unwonted fatigue,"[219] rendered fatal, the writer goes on to say, by the strange and pernicious habits of life indulged in by the Grand Duke, which the letter proceeds to describe at great length.

Now here, in any case, the writer only repeats what the two courtiers Pandolfo de' Bardi, and Troiano Boba said, and does not pretend to any original knowledge on the subject. But may it not be possible that those strange opening sentences may be meant to convey a meaning which the writer dared not express clearly. If Ferdinando poisoned his brother, he rode from Rome to Poggio–a–Cajano to invest himself with the title of Great. If poison was prepared, or other arrangements for carrying out the crime were made at Rome, then he may be said to have obtained at Rome the title of Great, and it may be added that the title was "a most indecent one."

But further, this account of the death seems to contradict the statement of the letter published by Galluzzi, and cited above. The expressions seem to be incompatible with the supposition of an illness of several days. Finally, the mention of "strange and unusual contortions and much howling and groaning," seem to indicate that some other cause of death than the natural result of a pleurisy was in the writer's mind.

It is further stated, in support of the supposition, that the death was natural, that the bodies were opened and examined after death; that of Bianca in the presence of her daughter and son–in–law. To this it may be remarked in the first place, that the medical science of the time was wholly incompetent to ascertain the cause of death from a post–mortem examination, as will be remarkably exemplified in the following pages of the life of Elizabetta Sirani. In the next place the examiners were the court physicians, in the pay and in the power of the new sovereign. And as to the presence of Pellegrina and Bentivoglio, the fact that Ferdinando should have sought to draw an evidence of his innocence of any foul practice from a circumstance so utterly useless and inconclusive as the presence of two persons wholly ignorant of anatomy and the action of poisons on the body, is rather a presumption against him than otherwise. He must have known perfectly well that had Bianca died by any poison whatever, Pellegrina and Bentivoglio could have been none the wiser for seeing the body opened.

"LA PESSIMA BIANCA."

In favour of either the second or third hypothesis there is no direct evidence whatever. If Ferdinando de' Medici had to be tried for the murder, he must according to all the evidence we have, be most undoubtedly acquitted. But nobody at the time seems to have believed in the two deaths having happened from natural causes. Then the popular hypothesis was the second. Notwithstanding the certificates of court physicians, the statements of the progress of the malady, and the post–mortem examinations, people found it very difficult to believe that two such opportune deaths should occur all but simultaneously by natural causes, the assigned nature of which did not admit of any question of contagion. If anybody was so unlucky as to have conceived the idea, that this death might have "come riding" to Poggio–a–Cajano from Rome, of course he very carefully suppressed all utterance of it. But it was universally believed that Bianca was capable of any amount of treachery, craft, and crime. The story of the poisoned pastry, and the dramatic events it gave rise to, made exactly one of those narratives, rich in varied emotions and in retributive justice, which storytellers like to tell, and their audience like to hear. And it was perfectly safe to cast as much odium as any brain could imagine on the hated Bianca. To do so indeed was to fall in with the court humour, and to share the feelings of the new sovereign, who would never speak of her, or permit her to be spoken of as the late Grand Duchess, and who never himself named her otherwise, than as "the wretch Bianca,"—la pessima Bianca.[220]