mpassioned
kiss upon those lovely lips, which had so long yearned for a husband's
embrace, he adroitly threw the rope round his wife's neck, and pulling
it taut in a wild access of rage, he strangled her--holding on until her
struggles ceased!

Then he cast her fair body from him, and spurned it with his foot, as
though it had been some foul and loathsome thing. Thus perished, in her
thirty-sixth year, Isabella de' Medici, wife of Paolo Giordano
d'Orsini--as sinful as she was lovely, but much more sinned against than
sinning after all.

Before the dawn of day the Duke, accompanied by one attendant only, rode
into Florence, and left at the Palazzo Pitti a heartless message for the
Grand Duke, requesting him to despatch the brethren of the
_Misericordia_ to Cerreto Guidi, where was "something which required
their attention"--then he continued his course straight on to Rome.

Florence was aghast at this horror, but the Grand Duke Francesco kept
his own counsel, and no pursuit followed the murderer. An official
announcement was made to the effect that "The Duchess of Bracciano died
in a fit of apoplexy." This nobody for a moment believed: whether her
brother was privy to the deed is perhaps open to doubt, for he and
Isabella were devoted to one another.

It has been said that it was due to Bianca Buonaventuri's persuasion
that the Grand Duke took no steps to vindicate his sister's honour or
dishonour. The punishment of assassins mostly leads to further
assassinations, and the "_La cosa di Francesco_" had reason to fear for
her own life, seeing that her husband and her two dearest friends in
Florence had been done brutally to death.

What became of the child, whose cries the Duke of Bracciano had heard,
at Villa Poggio Baroncelli, no one seems to have recorded, nor are there
any statements extant as to who his father actually was--a boy he was
anyhow, and, though his name is uncertain, he was spoken of by the
Duchess as "_il mio becchino_," "my little kid."

We may father him as we like--and at least three claimants for that
honour are known--Troilo d'Orsini, the Duke's cousin and the Duchess'
companion; Lelio Torello, the comely young _Calcio_ player, and the
favourite page of the Grand Duke Francesco; and, be it said in terms of
doubt and horror, the Grand Duke Cosimo! If the latter, then this
"Tragedy" is the culmination of all the abominable orgies which have
blackened the character of the greatest tyrant and mons