om restraint and the benefit
of urgently needed change, they knew, would work wonders in the way of
recovery.

Don Francesco was immovable to all such representations; he had over and
over again declined to reverse or modify his decision. His fully
justified fear of the Cardinal's intrigues acted as a negative magnet to
all his best propositions. He and she were bound together, he felt sure,
in schemes for his own undoing, and Bianca's too.

The Lady Cammilla's life became at last intolerable; sickness,
suspicion, and discontent fastened their dire influences upon her. She
neglected useful and ornamental pastimes, became morose and impatient,
and gave way to fits of frenzied desperation. The Abbess, greatly
alarmed, took counsel with her spiritual advisers, who judged that the
unhappy lady was losing her reason, and, perchance, her soul. Her
condition became so critical that in April 1587 the Tuscan ambassador in
Rome applied to the Pope for permission for the chaplain of the convent
to celebrate a Mass for the exorcism of the poor lady!

In October of that year the fell schemes of Cardinal Ferdinando had, at
last, their fruition, and the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess died together
at Poggio a Caiano, victims of his jealousy and hate. He obtained at
last what he had striven for so unscrupulously for twenty years--the
succession to the Tuscan throne.

Be it, however, in justice told, with respect to the Lady Cammilla, for,
when he had spurned the dead body of the Grand Duchess, and
hypocritically sad, had followed the remains of his poisoned brother to
San Lorenzo, he went right off to the convent of Santa Monica, and
acquainted her personally with the fact of delivery from a living tomb.

They had only met very occasionally during the last few years, and she
had changed greatly--perhaps he had, too. Her terrible trials, her
bodily sicknesses, and her mental derangements had made ineffaceable
marks in the erstwhile beauteous girl, and Cammilla de' Medici was no
longer possible as the wife of the renegade Cardinal. Marriage was out
of the question for her; indeed, her very existence was at stake, and
all that Ferdinando could do was to alleviate the sufferings of his
_innamorata_, and to cheer her declining days.

Many years before, Ferdinando had purchased a piece of ground at the
confluence of the Arno and Pesa, and, upon it, he built the Villa
Ambrogiana, which he furnished in lavish style, boasting that "it will