Solemn obsequies were celebrated in the Duomo of Pisa.  Don Giovanni was honoured with all the gorgeous ceremonies due to a Cardinal Archbishop, and some say his body was left there, whilst the burial of poor Don Garzia was completed by a simple service in San Lorenzo in Florence.  The cause of the twofold lamentable occurrence was officially ascribed to malarial fever—­the two young victims having contracted, as it was said, the fatal malady during the progress of the Court through Tuscany.

The Duchess Eleanora did not long survive her sons.  She never left her bed in the Castle of Rosignano until she was carried for expert advice and treatment into Pisa.  Prince Francesco returned in haste, from his tour of the Courts, and did much, by his loving sympathy, to revive his stricken mother.  Still of no real avail were all the remedies, for she breathed her last one month after that terrible day in the forest, and her body was borne sorrowfully into Florence, and, within the octave of Christmas laid beside her dearly-loved Garzia.

As for Duke Cosimo, Don Francesco found him a changed man, aged by a good ten years, silent, morose, and indifferent to all that transpired around him.

News of the tragedy was current in the city of Trent, where the Aecumenical Council was in session, and it made a great impression upon the assembled prelates and assistants.  Masses were offered for ten days for the repose of the souls of Giovanni and Garzia, and devotions were addressed to Heaven on behalf of the father who had—­no one there for a moment doubted—­been the avenger of one son’s blood and the spiller of the other’s.

Within two years Cosimo de’ Medici—­ever pursued by an accusing conscience and diverted only from suicide by indulging in every sensuality within his power, executed an instrument of abdication of his sovereignty, naming Don Francesco Regent of the Duchy, and retaining for himself no more than the title of Duke of Florence.

CHAPTER IV

LUCREZIA—­ELEANORA—­ISABELLA

Three Murdered Princesses

“Shall I go in, or shall I not?” asked Isabella de’ Medici, Duchess of Bracciano, with a catch in her voice.

Donna Lucrezia de’ Frescobaldi, her first Lady of Honour, made no reply, but grasped her mistress’ arm convulsively.  The two women stood pale and trembling at the door of the Duke’s bedchamber, in their charming villa of Cerreto Guidi, a few miles out of Florence.

There was something uncanny in the air, which caused the Duchess and her lady instinctively to draw back.  It was not the Duke’s voice, for that was pitched in an unusually tender key, and yet, its very unusuality might have caused their trepidation.  There was something indefinable in the situation, which produced apprehension and alarm.

Doubtless their nerves were overstrained by the terrible event at Cafaggiuolo.  Eleanora, the Duchess’s sister-in-law, had seen and felt the cold steel dagger, struck out from behind the arras, by her husband’s hand—­she was dead!  Every titled woman, and many another too, felt instinctively that she was walking on dangerous ground:  murder seemed to lurk everywhere, and marriage appeared to spell assassination!