t possible to give a clear and
certain answer. We have seen that he suffered from a horrible and
voracious disease, which after his removal from Rome seems to have
made progress. Yet though this malady may well have cut his life
short, suspicion of poison was not, in the circumstances, quite
unreasonable. The Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Pope, and the Orsini
family were all interested in his death. Anyhow, he had time to make a
will in Vittoria's favour, leaving her large sums of money, jewels,
goods, and houses--enough, in fact, to support her ducal dignity with
splendour. His hereditary fiefs and honours passed by right to his
only son, Virginio.

Vittoria, accompanied by her brother, Marcello, and the whole court of
Bracciano, repaired at once to Padua, where she was soon after joined
by Flaminio, and by the Prince Lodovico Orsini. Lodovico Orsini
assumed the duty of settling Vittoria's affairs under her dead
husband's will. In life he had been the Duke's ally as well as
relative. His family pride was deeply wounded by what seemed to him an
ignoble, as it was certainly an unequal, marriage. He now showed
himself the relentless enemy of the Duchess. Disputes arose between
them as to certain details, which seem to have been legally decided in
the widow's favour. On the night of the 22nd of December, however,
forty men disguised in black and fantastically tricked out to elude
detection, surrounded her palace. Through the long galleries and
chambers hung with arras, eight of them went, bearing torches, in
search of Vittoria and her brothers. Marcello escaped, having fled the
house under suspicion of the murder of one of his own followers.
Flaminio, the innocent and young, was playing on his lute and singing
_Miserere_ in the great hall of the palace. The murderers surprised
him with a shot from one of their harquebuses. He ran, wounded in the
shoulder, to his sister's room. She, it is said, was telling her beads
before retiring for the night. When three of the assassins entered,
she knelt before the crucifix, and there they stabbed her in the left
breast, turning the poignard in the wound, and asking her with savage
insults if her heart was pierced. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I
pardon you.' Then they turned to Flaminio, and left him pierced with
seventy-four stiletto wounds.

The authorities of Padua identified the bodies of Vittoria and
Flaminio, and sent at once for further instructions to Venice.
Meanwhile it appea