But the little family circle there was in the beginning of 1553, broken by the recall of Theodora to the death–bed of her mother. The premature death of Francesca Bucyronia, who had been Olympia's friend at the court of Ferrara, and whose destiny in life had been so singularly the counterpart of her own, was almost as deeply felt in the home at Schweinfurth as in her own at Würzburg. There is a letter from Sinapi to Calvin,[112] in which he tells him of his loss.
"I had been absent," he writes, "from Würzburg; and my return, and that of Theodora, our beloved daughter (whom we had confided to the care of a matron as pious as she is erudite, Olympia Morata, whose name is no doubt known to you), seemed to restore her" (his wife) "in some degree. But soon all hope was gone * * * Oh! what a faithful and tender friend I have lost in my Francesca. She had joyfully followed me into Germany; and had quickly familiarised herself with the language and manners of this country. She preferred the simple rusticity of my countrymen, to the insincerity and calumny from which she had suffered during the latter part of our residence at Ferrara."
HAPPY AT SCHWEINFURTH.
This intimation that Francesca also had suffered from the displeasure of the Court of Ferrara, at the same time that Olympia had fallen into disgrace, would seem to add probability to the supposition, that the same cause, their common Protestantism, was the motive of the Court hostility in either case.
Olympia's French biographer[113] thinks that this period of her life at Schweinfurth, was "one of sacrifice," and that "isolation and obscurity were now her lot." It does not seem to me that this Schweinfurth home is thus fairly described, or that Olympia so regarded it. I think that it included a fair proportion of the elements of happiness, and that she was perfectly capable of appreciating those elements.
If only the simple home, with its quiet round of congenial duties and congenial pleasures could have been preserved to the physician and his wife, their story might have ended more in the idyllic than the tragic tone. From lyric girlhood to idyllic matronhood the progress is normal, and need excite no pity for its "isolation and obscurity." But the sequel of the tale, which remains to be told, renders it indeed a tragedy.