holds the visitor who penetrates this delicious
solitude is due not alone to the sense of sight. A haunting
suggestiveness breathes from these surroundings, like the perfume
exhaled when one unlocks a long-closed sandal-wood casket, once the
depository of dainty feminine trifles. It needs not the name of the
villa to tell us that a lady, sitting in this loggia, once duplicated Da
Udine's traceries in her embroidery, gathered roses in the garden, and
looked longingly toward Rome while awaiting the coming of her princely
lover, and many a visitor has been piqued by the ignorance of the
custodian of the villa to search history for this mysterious Madama.

[Illustration: Margaret of Austria, Duchess of Parma, 1586

From an old engraving]

Margaret of Austria, daughter of an Emperor, wife of the reputed son of
one Pope and of the grandson of another, Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
and Duchess of Parma, quartered the imperial eagle upon the balls of the
Medici and the lilies of the Farnese. That the bar sinister was
conspicuous upon her escutcheon mattered little in the age in which she
lived, for the Emperor Charles V. acknowledged and advanced the
interests of his illegitimate daughter with the same lack of
embarrassment shown by the popes in the favouritism of their "nephews."

A doubtful advantage this, but one with far-reaching consequences, for
when Margaret was twelve years of age, Charles conquered Rome and the
child's connection with Italy and the Villa Madama had its beginning.

The villa had been built by Raphael for Pope Clement VII., while he was
yet only Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, as a pleasure casino to which he
could retreat from the cares imposed upon him by his cousin, Pope Leo X.
Later when as successor to the tiara he found that not the least burden
in the heavy legacy bequeathed him was that of the guardianship of the
Medici family, it became the resort of his Florentine relatives on their
quieter visits to Rome and the home of a mysterious child, Alessandro,
of whom the Pope announced himself the guardian.

When Lorenzo II., (grandson of the Magnificent) died, leaving but one
legitimate child, Catherine de' Medici, the future Queen of France,
Clement imposed Alessandro upon Florence as the natural son of Duke
Lorenzo.

There lacked not shrugging of shoulders at this imputed parentage and
Florence revolted against receiving a bastard and a mulatto as its
sovereign.

But trouble was brewing both for