This cabal was perfectly well known to the Grand Duke Cosimo, but he let matters take their course; all he cared for was the embraces of his attractive wife and the flatteries of his hypocritical son.  The death of Duchess Giovanna threw Ferdinando and Cammilla more than ever into one another’s arms.  What, and if Francesco and Bianca died without male heir!  Why, on the death of Cosimo, Ferdinando and Cammilla might succeed to the Grand Ducal throne.  This was the temptation which the Cardinal placed, like a young bud, in Cammilla’s bosom.  She was but human—­very human; she had been slighted by the non-allowance of rank as Grand Duchess.  Perhaps Destiny had still that distinction in reserve.  She would wait.

The pathos of Cammilla’s life deepened during the last four years of Grand Duke Cosimo’s life.  He became a constant sufferer with many infirmities.  The strenuous life he had lived, with its exercise of lustful love and lurid hate, tried to the breaking point his iron constitution.  Gout was his direst torment, a malady productive of ill-humour at its worst, and poor Cammilla, lonely wife, nurse, companion, had none to share his impatience.

Her own health gave way under the strain, and her indisposition pointed to apoplexy and to mental trouble.  But deliverance came at last.  On 20th April 1574, Cosimo breathed his last at Poggio a Caiano, in his fifty-fifth year.  By his death-bed there watched only his chastened wife and his sanctimonious son.  Of his other surviving children, Isabella—­once his favourite—­had suffered for sixteen years the misunderstandings and the heartburnings which her heartless marriage-contract had imposed; she was estranged from him and from Cammilla, and from the Cardinal.  Piero was a wastrel, the exponent of his father’s worst passions—­Piero, “Il Scandalezzatore” as he was rightly called.  Francesco had borne ten years’ embarrassment as quasi-ruler of the State, subject to ceaseless cautions and contradictions:  he was, in no sensuous or homicidal sense, his father’s son.  All three stayed markedly away from Poggio a Caiano.

* * * * *

Almost the first act of the new Sovereign was the enclosure of his father’s young widow in a convent!  He placed her first with the Benedictine nuns of the Vergine dell’ Annunziata delle Murate, and then in the noble sanctuary of Santa Monica, not with her poor cousin Eleanora degli Albizzi away at Foligno!

This certainly appears to the ordinary reader of romances a cruel and unjustifiable act, but to the student of diplomatic expediency, it was a foregone conclusion.  The security of Francesco’s rule depended entirely upon the suppression of dynastic intrigues.  The person of Ferdinando was unassailable; as a Prince of the Church he had prerogatives which could not be removed by any temporal sovereign.  All that Francesco could do was to forbid his presence upon Tuscan territory, and this he did.