CAFAGGIUOLO.
"As for obligations, I will sign you as many as you please."
"Moreover——"
"Oh dear me! now come the restrictions!"
"No! only you will undertake the removal of your infamous wife when and where I shall command."
"This article is also agreed to. When am I to have the ducats?"
"To–morrow!"
And in accordance with the characteristic scene thus painted for us by Signor Guerrazzi, we find on returning from verisimilitude to recorded fact, that on the ninth of July in the year 1576, just a week previous to the murder of Isabella Orsini, the wretched Eleonora,—she too another victim of Cosmo's atrocious profligacy—was put to death by Don Pietro's own hand at the Villa of Cafaggiuolo. That ill–omened place is a castle among the Apennines, some fifteen or twenty miles from Florence, which the traveller thence to Bologna will hardly fail to notice. Solitary and desolate as it stands now among the mountains by the side of the high–road, it was yet more so, when no such road existed. The dark naked stone tower standing there on the hill–side turf, without tree or cultivation near it of any kind, strikes the imagination as the very spot adapted for such a crime.
Of course, as usual, there were medical declarations of the cause of her death, and the courts were duly informed that God had pleased to take to himself our dearly beloved sister–in–law, &c. But it is remarkable that to his agent at the court of Philip II., Francesco wrote a private letter, which is still extant,[168] ordering him to communicate the whole truth of the murder to that monarch. And Philip, while expressing regret for the cause of the crime, manifested no disapproval of it, and promised all secrecy concerning it.
It is recorded, that Don Pietro immediately after the perpetration of the deed, with hands yet bloody from the task, took the precaution of imploring pardon for it, from a figure of the Virgin Mary in an adjoining chapel, promising at the same time, that as an expiation he would thenceforth remain single;—a vow which he did not keep.