ropped up with pillows, a piteous appeal to the
Pope, in which she craved his Holiness's prayers and benedictions, and
also his fatherly protection for Francesco and herself. She said: "I do
not feel at all sure of the Cardinal." The pontiff replied
sympathetically, and assured her that no wrong should be done her or the
Grand Duke by anybody.

Francesco showed no signs of improvement, but gradually got weaker. When
too late for any remedial measures to have effect, the physicians, in
private conference, agreed that the cause of his seizure was poison,
but--looking from the clenched hand of the dying prince to the open palm
of his successor--they, in sordid self-interest, held their tongues. Who
had administered the fatal drug, and when, and where, had better not be
published! If by a fraternal hand, then it was no concern of theirs!

The Grand Duke expired in agony on the tenth day after his seizure.
Bianca could not leave her couch to soothe his last moments. She was
nearly as far gone as he, and her attendants waited upon her with the
gloomiest forebodings. To her impassioned cries for her husband, they
returned deceptive answers. None of her kith and kin were near to
comfort her. Her only brother, Vettor, had been dismissed the Tuscan
Court in the year of her coronation for unseemly and presumptuous
behaviour, and his wife went back with him to Venice. There was no time
and no one to correspond with her favourite cousin Andrea. Her
tenderly-loved daughter, Pellegrina was at Bologna, nursing her own
little Bianca, lately born, and could not travel so far as Florence.

Little Antonio would have been an affectionate companion in his loving
foster-mother's illness, but the child was at Pratolino with Maria and
Eleanora, unhappy Giovanna's daughters. The former, just fifteen years
old, had been Bianca's special care. She was a precocious child, and her
stepmother imparted to her some of her own delightful inspirations--the
two were inseparable. What a comfort she would have been in gentle
ministrations to the suffering Grand Duchess!

Perhaps, had pain-racked, dying Bianca imagined the splendid destiny of
the attractive young Princess Maria, she might have gathered no little
solace. Could she but have seen her own example and her precepts
reincarnated in a Queen of France--for Maria became the consort of Henry
II., and ruled him, his court and realm--she would have turned her face
to the wall with greater equanimity.