This great and noble woman saw then how well she was beloved.  This is how she obtained the greatest sacrifice of love that ever was made upon this earth.  She alone knew what a charm existed in the embraces, fondlings, and raptures of the conjugal bed, which were such that poor l’Ile Adam would rather have died than allow himself to be deprived of the amorous delicacies she knew so well how to prepare.  At this confession made by her that, in the excitement of love her heart would burst, the chevalier cast himself at her knees, and declared that to preserve her life he would never ask her for love, but would live contented to see her only at his side, happy at being able to touch but the hem of her garment.

She replied, bursting into tears, “that she would rather die than lose one iota of his love; that she would die as she had lived, since luckily she could make a man embrace her when such was her desire without having to put her request into words.”

Here it must be stated that the cardinal of Ragusa had given her as a present an article, which this holy joker called in articulo mortis.  It was a tiny glass bottle, no bigger than a bean, made at Venice, and containing a poison so subtle that by breaking it between the teeth death came instantly and painlessly.  He had received it from Signora Tophana, the celebrated maker of poisons of the town of Rome.

Now this tiny bottle was under the bezel of a ring, preserved from all objects that could break it by certain plates of gold.  Poor Imperia put it into her mouth several times without being able to make up her mind to bite it, so much pleasure did she take in the moment that she believed to be her last.  Then she would pass before her in mental review all her methods of enjoyment before breaking the glass, and determined that when she felt the most perfect of all joys she would bite the bottle.

The poor creature departed this life on the night on the first day of October.  Then was there heard a great clamour in the forests and in the clouds, as if the loves had cried aloud, “The great Noc is dead!” in imitation of the pagan gods who, at the coming of the Saviour of men, fled into the skies, saying, “the great Pan is slain!” A cry which was heard by some persons navigating the Eubean Sea, and preserved by a Father of the Church.

Madame Imperia died without being spoiled in shape, so much had God made her the irreproachable model of a woman.  She had, it was said, a magnificent tint upon her flesh, caused by the proximity of the flaming wings of Pleasure, who cried and groaned over her corpse.  Her husband mourned for her most bitterly, never suspecting that she had died to deliver him from a childless wife, for the doctor who embalmed her said not a word concerning the cause of her death.  This great sacrifice was discovered six years after marriage of l’Ile Adam with Mademoiselle de Montmorency, because she told him all about the visit of Madame Imperia.  The poor gentleman immediately fell into a state of great melancholy and finished by dying, being unable to banish the remembrance of those joys of love which it was beyond the power of a novice to restore to him; thereby did he prove the truth of that which was said at that time, that this woman would never die in a heart where she had once reigned.