He was surrounded by heirs-presumptive and aspirants to the throne—­Don Antonio, his brother’s adopted son; Don Giovanni, his father’s legitimatised son by Eleanora degli Albizzi; his brother Piero, and any one of his bastard sons, and several other scions of the house.  The Lady Cammilla entered heartily into all her stepson’s ideas, and quickly, though doubtlessly regretfully, agreed with him that a brilliant foreign alliance was an absolute necessity.

Together they passed in review the names of all the eligible princesses in Europe, and at last their choice fell upon Princess Christina, the young daughter of Charles, Duke of Lorraine, and nephew of Queen Caterina de’ Medici.  She was received in Florence with joy, and married to the Grand Duke in 1589.  The Lady Cammilla graced the nuptials with her presence, laying aside the dark-hued garments of sorrow which she had assumed and worn so long.

That was the last time Cammilla was seen in public; she retired first to her villa on the Arno, and then, seeing that the symptoms of illness were returning, she voluntarily retired once more into what had been her prison and her home—­the convent of Santa Monica, where she breathed her last on the 30th of May 1590, at the early age of forty-five, to the unutterable sorrow of the devoted ladies of her suite and her faithful attendants.  In the Libri de’ Morti (1577-1591) we read under that date:  “La Signora Cammilla d’il Serenissimo Gran Duca Cosimo de’ Medici, despositata in San Lorenzo.”  Some say she died imbecile.

Upon the reverse of one medal, which Cosimo had struck in honour of their nuptials, was cut around the heraldic emblazonment of an oak tree and a dragon, her legend:  “Uno avulso non deficit alter aureus.”  This may be the epitome of her life’s history, and upon it one may moralise at will; and certainly readers of the “Tragedy of Cammilla de’ Martelli” will admit that a spoilt life is as great a catastrophe as a violent death.

* * * * *

It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture the morals and the manners of society in Tuscany during the last half of the sixteenth century.  The superabundance of private riches and the enervation of idle leisure destroyed the framework of domestic economy; “Di fare il Signore!”—­to play the gentleman—­was the current mode.  Everyone strove to surpass his neighbours in luxury and extravagance.

The example of the Court was felt in every grade of life:  marital unfaithfulness, personal spleen, and family feuds divided every household.  The worst of human passions ran riot, and life became a pandemonium, wherein the sharp poignard, the poison phial, and the strangling rope, played their part at the dastardly will of their owners.

Fair Florence was still—­as she will ever be—­“The City of the Lily”; but the blue and silver emblematic giglio—­the modestly unfolding fragrant iris of the unsophisticated countryside, drooped before the flaming, passionate tiger-lily of the formal garden of debauchery, with its pungent odour and its secretive, incurled scarlet petals—­splashed with the blacks and yellows of crime and greed!