And what of unsympathetic, violent Carlo de’ Panciatichi?  Well, he, too, got his deserts.  The very year after he had put away his wife, he again made himself liable to execution for murder.  One morning a servant of his, Sebastiano del Valdarno, who had not been paid wages due to him, ventured to remind his master of the circumstance.  Cavaliere Carlo, who could never tolerate demands for money with equanimity, was enraged by the man’s presumption, and, seizing hold of a heavy pouch full of bronze denari, he flung it at the unlucky fellow, saying—­“Go to hell and take your money with you!”

The impact fractured the man’s skull and he died in hospital!  Again Panciatichi was condemned to a heavy fine, with the capital sentence in contumacia, by the Otto di Guardia e Balia.  He was conveyed to prison, the old Stinche, until he paid the fine.  Eleanora, in her convent, heard of his punishment, and actually rendered him good for evil, as a tender-hearted and suffering woman would quite naturally do.  She pleaded with the Grand Duke Francesco for his deliverance, and joined her son, Don Giovanni de’ Medici, in her appeal.

Cavaliere Carlo de’ Panciatichi was not set free till November 1581, when he had fully paid all the claims preferred against him by the family of the man he had slain, which included a provision for a certain contadina.  She was a superior domestic servant in the employment of the Panciatichi family, and a personal attendant upon Eleanora.  Madonna Ginevra, she was called, and she had two little girls.  Whether these children were the Cavaliere’s, no one has related, but upon the death of their mother they, too, found asylum at the convent of Sant Onofrio, and were tenderly treated by sad and lonesome Madonna Eleanora—­a sweet and pathetic action indeed!

The Cavaliere raised his head once more under the guilty rule of Grand Duke Francesco’s murderer, the unscrupulous Cardinal Ferdinando, and by him was appointed a Gentleman of Honour and a member of the new Grand Ducal Council of Two-Hundred.  He died long before his doubly-wronged, unhappy wife, Eleanora, on the 27th February 1620.

* * * * *

With Cammilla de’ Martelli came the end of the prosperous reign and the end of the profligate life of Cosimo de’ Medici, last Duke of Florence and first Grand Duke of Tuscany.  She was the youngest of the two daughters, the only children, of Messer Antonio di Domenico de’ Martelli, and his wife, Madonna Fiammetta, the daughter of Messer Niccolo de’ Soderini, a descendant of that earlier Niccolo, the self-seeking and unscrupulous adviser of Don Piero de’ Medici.

The Martelli traced their origin through two lines of ancestry:  to the Picciandoni of Pisa in the thirteenth century, and to the Stabbielli of the Val di Sieve in the fourteenth.  They appear to have settled in the Via degli Spadai, and to have “hammered” among the armourers there, so successfully, that their name was given to the street in lieu of its more ancient designation.