were of the very strongest nature. For the last ten years and more, she had been a constant thorn in his side, the ever recurring difficulty in all his schemes for aggrandising the family, the wreck of all his strivings for the support of the decorum and respectability of the Medicean name, and the ground of discord and hatred between him and his brother. She had made the Grand Duke the laughing-stock of Italy, and odious as well as contemptible to his own subjects. Her blood-stained practising had succeeded in foisting one base-born plebeian of alien blood into the family. She was continually attempting still worse frauds to wrong him of his birthright; and though by the exertion of extreme vigilance her schemes had been hitherto foiled, what possible security, short of her death, could be had against the success of future attempts of the same sort. A De Medici, and a sixteenth century Cardinal may well have persuaded himself that he was justified under the circumstances, in adopting the only possible means of providing against such treason, pregnant with such results.

But his brother? Can it be shown that Ferdinando had sufficient motive to wish his brother's death, as to favour the probability that he was his murderer? It can only be said, that there was old hate between them, constantly stimulated and embittered by fresh provocations of the most galling sort on the part of the elder brother; hate, made more dangerous by the necessity for carefully suppressing all manifestation of it for long years of self-restraining dissimulation; that from the manner in which Francesco had received the proposals of a second marriage after the death of his first wife, there was very little room to hope that Bianca's death would be followed by any marriage,

which might put the prospects of the family on a satisfactory footing; that to have taken off Bianca and left her husband alive would have been an exceedingly dangerous step, for then the inquiries, the suspicions, the post-mortem examinations, and the investigations, would, of course, have been of a very different sort, and, under the circumstances, very difficult to deal with; that, finally, last, though far from least, Ferdinando was a De Medici.

That shrewd and sagacious old man, Pope Sixtus V., saw at once,* on hearing of what had happened, that suspicion of the double murder would fall on the Cardinal; and it may perhaps be said, without much chance of inaccuracy, that the balance of opinion among those most qualified to judge, has, in modern times, inclined in that direction.

But to return from the region of conjecture to that of historical certainty, a few words will suffice to tell all that remains of Bianca's story. As soon as the' breath had left her body, the Bishop Abbioso, who had been left at Poggio-a-Cajano by Ferdinando, wrote to him:

"This instant, at eight o'clock-' quindici ore'-her Most Serene Highness the Grand Duchess passed to another life. The present messenger is sent in haste to receive the orders of your Highness as to the disposition of her body."

Orders were sent back that the body should "be kept intact till the evening," and then opened, as has been said. The same night it was buried, "so that no memorial of her should remain;" the new sovereign's reply to the application for orders on this head being, "We will have none of her among our dead!"

* Galluzzi. Lib. 4, ch. 8.

The hatred of the Florentines for both Francesco and Bianca was intense. If anything, the latter was yet more detested than her husband. In addition to all the grounds of hatred common to both of them, she was a foreigner, and "a witch," a practiser of black art. And this accusation, more than aught else, made the burden of the abuse that was heaped upon her. Of course, it was not safe to say much of the deceased sovereign. But satirists, libellers, pasquinade-writers, and epigraph-mongers, had full licence to exercise their wit at the expense of the "pessima Bianca."

Here are specimens of their expressions of the popular estimate of her, which were current in the city immediately after her death. They are taken from the same letter of Signor Soderini, so often quoted:

"Qui giace in un avel pien di malie

In English:

E pien di vizi la Bianca Cappella,
Bagasica, strega, maliarda e fella,
Che sempre favorì furfanti e spie."

"Here in a grave, brimful of vices foul

And evil sorceries, Bianca lies,

A huzzy, witch, and mistress of fell spells;
In life the dearest friend of rogues and spies."

Another runs as follows:

"In questa tomba, in questa oscura buca
Ch' è fossa a quei che non hanno sepoltura,

Opra d' incanti, e di malie fattura

Giace la Bianca, moglie del Granduca."

Which may stand, if the absence of the rhyme be

excused, in English thus:

"Within this tomb, this undistinguished hole,
The grave of those who sepulture have none,
That worker of black arts and evil charms,
Bianca lies, the wife of our Grand Duke."

FERDINANDO SUCCEEDS.

345

The Cardinal Ferdinando succeeded to his brother's throne without disturbance or difficulty; slipped off his priesthood by dispensation, seeing that it was for the benefit of mankind that he should do so; manifested, as Sismondi says,* "as much talent for government as is compatible with the absence of all virtue, and as much pride, as can exist without nobility of mind; " merited the affection of his subjects by taking off, among sundry mint and cumin dues, the tax upon cat's meat; married Cristina, daughter of Charles Duke of Lorraine, and succeeded in accomplishing the great and beneficent task of preserving the Medicean stock to Italy and mankind.

* Hist. Rep. Ital., ch. 123.

+ Letter of Soderini.-Guerrazzi's Isabella Orsini.

OLYMPIA PAMFILI.

(1594-1656.)

Pope Joan rediviva-Olympia's outlook on life-Her mode of " opening the oyster"-She succeeds in opening it-Olympia's sonOlympia at home in the Vatican-Her trade-A Cardinal's escape from the purple-Olympia under a cloud-Is once more at the head of the field-And in at the death-A conclave-Olympia's star wanes-Poena pede claudo.

IN the ninth century, the outlying Catholic world to the north of the Alps was horrified by reports, that a woman was occupying the chair of Peter, and the office of Heaven's vicegerent. A fact so scandalous and so extraordinary found ready credence among the monks and prelates of Germany. The reports of pious pilgrims who had returned from Rome, and testified that Christ's church was governed by a woman, were cited with every appearance of good faith and authenticity. And the story of Pope Joan, thus generated, rapidly acquired a world-wide acceptation, and was for ages believed, both within and without the pale of the Church, as a veritable historical fact. And a vast mass of learned, satirical, controversial, scandalous, and antiquarian letter-press has resulted from it.

But the huge fiction, which grew to be so large and so strong as to require the united efforts of several able literary men armed with many heavy volumes to kill it, was, like so many another dangerous mistake,