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CHAPTER III.

Bianca balances her accounts.-Dangers in her path.-A bold stepand its consequences.-Facilis descensus.-A proud father.-Bianca's witchcraft.-The Cardinal is checkmated, for this game.

BUT whatever other effect the untimely deaths of these two unfortunate women may have produced, they had not that of removing the gloom from the brow of Francesco. Surely, indeed, if he is to be considered. human, and in any degree sane, it may be thought, that such events must have contributed no little to increase the irritability of his temper, and the sudden melancholy, ever and anon bursting out into savageness. It is likely enough that Francesco's education at the Court of Spain, the obsequious casuistry of his own theologians, and the total absence from cradle to grave of any one wholesome moral influence, of any one ray of light to dissipate, however fitfully, the thick darkness of an ignorance of right and wrong far deeper, more dangerous, and more perverse than that of a savage; it is possible enough, that all this may have enabled him to say to his own heart, when kneeling at the feet of his most favourite idol, that his act had not made him guilty within the limitations of God's statute law, and the intricate modifications of it made by subsequent legislation, in such and such acts of such and such a year of this or the other Pope's reign.

Still, assure himself of this as he might, and fortify

VOL. II.

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the assurance by whatsoever most satisfactory "case," drawn up by the shrewdest sacerdotal pettifogger who ever discovered a flaw in heaven's eternal ordinances, it may be fancied that he did not sleep better of nights after that July, 1576, and that Bianca's position and task were not improved by what had happened.

Some thirty years or so ago, a Florentine publisher, happening to have become possessed of the house which once belonged to Bianca, in the Via Maggio, conceived the idea of pretending to have found concealed in a wall therein a MS. containing her autobiography. A prefatory notice stated, that unfortunately the chemical means used for restoring the faded characters to legibility had had the effect of entirely destroying them, so that the finder of these precious papers could not have the satisfaction he had hoped of showing them to persons interested in such matters! The forgery was an impudent and ridiculously ill-executed one. A very superficial knowledge of the language sufficed to convince any reader of the first two pages of the silly catch-penny trash, that the phraseology was of the nineteeth and not the sixteenth century, even had the tone of the narrative been at all assorted to the character of the supposed writer.

But what a treat would such a find be, were it genuine! What a psychological treasure would be a peep into the real feelings of such a mind and heart! Did Bianca consider her career to be a triumphant one, successfully achieving the "excelsior" of her ideal by painful but victorious struggle with opposing fortune? Or did she look on herself as the victim of a chain of unfortunate circumstances, entangled in the meshes of a destiny, which drew her fatally on, and irresistibly wrapped its darkening clouds around her. Few

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recorded careers illustrate so exactly, regularly, and undeviatingly the lessons of the moralist as that of Bianca. No invented story of progress from bad to worse can better exemplify the law that compels evil to generate ever new evil.

Thus far, supposing her not to have been guilty of her husband's murder, her ill-doings have not been such as to put her beyond the pale of human sympathies. She fled from a home made unhappy by a negligent father and an unkind step-mother.* It was ill-done. Deceived by her husband as to his position in the world, finding herself a prisoner in a miserable cottage, where she was obliged to do the work of a servant (because the poverty of her husband's family was such, that when she was brought home to be fed and lodged, the drudge hitherto kept by them. could be no longer fed or lodged),† she listened to the seduction of a prince, and left a husband, who was perfectly contented with the arrangement. This was worse; yet far from unpardonable.

But now a career of darker crime had to be entered on. Bianca was now the inmate of a court. Virtues and vices there are on a larger scale. "Major rerum nascitur ordo." The interests and passions of despotic princes are dangerous matters to meddle with, mostly leaving stains and scars on the hands and hearts of those concerned in ministering to them. Enough of both, one would think, must have fallen to Bianca's lot.

Let us see, then, if we can succeed in looking into her mind, as it must at this period have contemplated her position, taking stock of the gains and losses thus far realised.

* Litta. Fam. Med. Art. Bianca.

Ademollo. Mar. de Ricci. Notes, p. 628.

"To exercise the most powerful influence in a splendid court; to receive daily homage, and something more solid than homage, from all who have favours to ask, justice to seek, or injustice to pay for; to dispense promotions, reward friends and crush enemies; all this is worth something. To be the courted patroness of the relatives who so loudly complained of my having disgraced them, to dispense my bounty to the father and brother who denounced me, and to be the means of sustaining and advancing the grandeur of the family whose daughter I am; all this is worth still more. To become, what, if fate do not play me false, I will become, and make the Ten themselves bow before the poor outlawed exile! Ay, that indeed would be more again. It is something, too, by the blaze of my beauty and the glitter of my magnificence, to thrust back that pale, proud Austrian woman into cold obscurity. She, indeed, to think of being a wife to Francesco! She to dream of taking in charge such a nature as his! She to attempt the task of comprehending, sympathising with, soothing, managing, ay, and mastering those surging passions, that wilful mind, and fitful heart! She! It is a part cast, methinks, for an actress of other powers than hers! But what if it should prove too difficult for my own? She, indeed, is at least secure in the frozen dignity of her place. She is the Grand Duchess, and needs to practise no such ruling of the storms to hold her safe position. But for me! To rule them, or to perish in them, is the only alternative. If I cease to rule but for a day, I fall, and am crushed into the dust! That is the condition on which I hold my place in Florence! And the Saints know how many waking nights and anxious days the holding of it thus far has cost me! And the

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task seems growing from day to day more arduous The Duke's deepening melancholy and discontent at his childlessness is dangerous-very dangerous. May he not seek elsewhere for that which I have failed to give him! Francesco loves me;-I think he loves me; that is, he has need of me. But should some more painfully felt need require that I should be sacrificed, trampled into dust, burned at the stake, torn limb from limb; my Francesco's love, methinks, would hardly save me. Had I but a child, could I but be the mother of a son to stand between him and the Cardinal, I should, I think, be safe!"

Somewhat to this tune, we may suppose, Bianca's ruminations must have often run during the early months of that fatal summer of 1576; till at length the urgency of the case, arising from the Duke's increasing gloom and discontent, determined her to adopt the dangerous expedient of counterfeiting the maternity which nature denied her.

From the earliest years of her connection with Francesco, it had been her earnest wish to present him with a son. And when, as time ran on, it began to appear unlikely that she should do so, she left none of the means untried, to which the gross ignorance and superstition of the time attributed the power of removing sterility. With this view, she had constantly about her a number of the vilest vagabonds, impostors, philtre-dealers, necromancers, poison-concoctors, spellmongers, and quack-doctors in Europe. In all probability she practised with love-philtres, to secure her ascendancy over the Duke. It may have been, also, - that she had occasion to dabble in the secrets of the professors of the art of poisoning. But the grand object of her medico-witchcraft was to become a

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