Deep–felt and complete as we may suppose the happiness Olympia and her husband felt at their union, the marriage must have partaken more of a solemn than of a festive character. There were many difficulties and uncertainties yet before them. To remain in Ferrara, heretics as they were, whose heresy was every day becoming dearer to them, and the open profession of it a craving desire; when Fannio was daily expecting to be brought out of his dungeon to a martyr's death; when the Inquisition was craving for fresh victims; and when the marriage itself was deemed an offence by the Duke, was out of the question. Yet it was hard to leave a mother and sisters; and that rough northern land across the mountains, where freedom of conscience might indeed be hoped for, nevertheless was not itself by any means in a condition to offer her a secure and quiet home.

So far was this from being the case, that Grünthler deemed it necessary to submit to a separation from his wife almost immediately after his marriage, that he might, before taking her to Germany, go thither alone to fix on, and prepare, a home for her. His hope was to obtain a professorial chair in some of the medical schools of Bavaria or the Palatinate, and to be able to return to Olympia in the spring of 1551. In the meantime, he had the great consolation of leaving her under the protection of Lavinia della Rovere; whose considerable influence, though it seems to have been exercised in vain to obtain Olympia's restoration to the good graces of the ducal family, yet probably sufficed to prevent any measures of active persecution against her.

Here is the letter above mentioned in its entirety. Perhaps some reader may like to see, that a young wife's honeymoon letter was in 1550 pretty much the same thing, word for word, as a similar effusion in 1850 might be. Of no letter on any other topic, three hundred years old, could the same be said.

"Your departure," writes the lovely wife, "was a great grief to me, and the long absence following it the greatest misfortune that could have befallen me. For when I have you by my side, I am not tormented by the anxieties that now beset me. I am always imagining that you have had a fall, or broken your limbs, or been frozen by the extreme cold. And perhaps I have not imagined anything worse than the reality! You know the poet's saying—

"Res est soliciti plena timoris amor."

"Love is a thing compact of jealous fears."

Now, if you would alleviate this haunting anxiety, which I cannot shake off, you will, if possible, contrive to let me know what you are doing, and how you are. For, I swear to you, that my whole heart is yours, as you know full well. Did I feel differently, I would not hide it from you; even as I formerly owned to you that I had conceived an aversion to you. Would that I were with you, my husband, if only the better to tell you the immensity of my love. You would not believe how I pine in your absence. There is nothing so difficult or so disagreeable that I would not do to please you, my husband. But can you wonder that this delay is hateful to me; for true love abominates and will not endure delay. Any other trial to which I could be put would be better for me than this. I beg and beseech you, therefore, to leave no stone unturned to bring about our meeting this summer as you promised. I know well that your affection is equal to mine; so I will not weary you by urging this point further. Nor have I said thus much in any wise to blame you, but only to remind you of your promise, though I know that you are fully occupied with all these cares."

LETTER TO HER HUSBAND.

Thus much may be found in "the complete letter writer," under the heading, "A young wife's first letter to an absent husband." What follows is of more interest.