The unfortunate Isabella Orsini has been very leniently judged by her countrymen. She was beautiful; carefully and highly educated, so far as the phrase includes exclusively intellectual culture; was a distinguished musician; spoke and wrote correctly several languages, including that of ancient Rome; was a poetess in a small way; and some philological treatise by her, still to be found in print in Italian libraries, indicates that she was not wholly given up to pursuits little compatible with intellectual exercise. Impudicity had been from her tender years instilled into her, both by precept and example, by an authority which nature's earliest dictates teach a child to consider as sacred above all others. With such a father and sovereign as Cosmo, and living in such a state of society as that which surrounded her, where the abundant practice of "religious duties" intertwined with, and forming a large part of every–day life, was joined to a degree of ignorance and neglect of "moral duties" unequalled, perhaps, in any other age and country, could Isabella Orsini have been other than lost as she was?
But the reforming hand which was to restore the court and family of the Medici to respectability, was not satisfied with one victim. It was on the 16th of July that Isabella Orsini was murdered; some days having been lost, as may be supposed, between the remonstrance of the Cardinal and the arrival of Paolo Giordano in Florence. The other victim, therefore, whose destined executioner was at hand, perished exactly one week earlier. When Francesco sent for his brother–in–law from Rome, he also summoned his brother Pietro to an interview.
Here again we have no means of knowing what passed between the brothers, other than such as can be gathered from the facts which followed thereupon, and from the well–known and well–marked characters of the actors. Drawing from these sources of knowledge, Guerrazzi, in his Racconto, entitled "Isabella Orsini," has fashioned forth the dialogue which may be supposed to have passed between them, with a verisimilitude as to circumstances and words, and an absolute truth as to character, so vividly illustrative of the men and the time, that an extract from it will convey more historical truth than many a page from a matter–of–fact chronicle.
Francesco begins by reproaching Don Pietro with his extravagances. "Don Francesco," answers the scapegrace, "Remember that I have come hither on the faith of your safe–conduct. Do not kill me with a sermon."
"Do I deserve this at your hands?" returned the elder, after some further disputing. "Have I not given, and do I not continue to give, proof of my love for my own blood?"
"As for your own, I don't know; but you certainly love blood...."
"I have to tell you then," said Francesco, "that you are the most abject, the most shameless, and most infamous knight that lives this day in Christendom."
"Strong language!" sneered Pietro. "Let us come to facts."
"Your wife is an adulteress."