ciatichi, who had resided in this monastery for fifty-six years, and
had reached the ninetieth year of her age. She lived in the odour of
sanctity with the devotion of a religious, and endowed the monastery
with a goodly bequest." The _Cosa di Cosimo--per il piacere di Cosimo_!
as time-serving, unfatherlike Messer Luigi degli Albizzi called the
immolation of his fair young daughter, had become the Bride of Christ!

And what of unsympathetic, violent Carlo de' Panciatichi? Well, he, too,
got his deserts. The very year after he had put away his wife, he again
made himself liable to execution for murder. One morning a servant of
his, Sebastiano del Valdarno, who had not been paid wages due to him,
ventured to remind his master of the circumstance. Cavaliere Carlo, who
could never tolerate demands for money with equanimity, was enraged by
the man's presumption, and, seizing hold of a heavy pouch full of bronze
_denari_, he flung it at the unlucky fellow, saying--"Go to hell and
take your money with you!"

The impact fractured the man's skull and he died in hospital! Again
Panciatichi was condemned to a heavy fine, with the capital sentence _in
contumacia_, by the _Otto di Guardia e Balia_. He was conveyed to
prison, the old _Stinche_, until he paid the fine. Eleanora, in her
convent, heard of his punishment, and actually rendered him good for
evil, as a tender-hearted and suffering woman would quite naturally do.
She pleaded with the Grand Duke Francesco for his deliverance, and
joined her son, Don Giovanni de' Medici, in her appeal.

Cavaliere Carlo de' Panciatichi was not set free till November 1581,
when he had fully paid all the claims preferred against him by the
family of the man he had slain, which included a provision for a certain
_contadina_. She was a superior domestic servant in the employment of
the Panciatichi family, and a personal attendant upon Eleanora. Madonna
Ginevra, she was called, and she had two little girls. Whether these
children were the Cavaliere's, no one has related, but upon the death of
their mother they, too, found asylum at the convent of Sant Onofrio, and
were tenderly treated by sad and lonesome Madonna Eleanora--a sweet and
pathetic action indeed!

The Cavaliere raised his head once more under the guilty rule of Grand
Duke Francesco's murderer, the unscrupulous Cardinal Ferdinando, and by
him was appointed a Gentleman of Honour and a member of the new Grand
Ducal Council of Two-Hundre