cautious prudence and self-possession could
effect.

Orsini, to do him justice, seems to have been
anxious, when the conviction of the great
precariousness of his life forced itself on him, to
make the best provision he could for her who
had been either the partner or the victim of his
crime. About the beginning of November in
that autumn of 1585, he made spontaneously,
as the historians especially assure us, a will
bequeathing to Vittoria a hundred thousand
crowns in money, besides a very considerable
property in plate, jewels, furniture, carriages,
horses, &c. It was further ordered that a palace
should be purchased for her in any city of Italy
she might select, of the value of ten thousand
crowns, and a villa of the value of six thousand.
Moreover, a household of forty servants
was to be maintained for her. And the Duke
of Ferrara was named the executor of this
will.

Having made this provision, the prince
determined on a journey to Venice in search of
better medical aid. But a journey in this direction
did not by any means suit the plans which
Vittoria had determined on. Reflecting on the
dangerous amount of hostility which would
surround her on every side as soon as her
husband should have breathed his last, and conscious
that this would be increased by the exorbitancy
of the provisions of the will in her favour, she
had made up her mind that her only safe course
was to get her husband out of Italy while it
was yet possible, over the Swiss frontier, which
is at no great distance from Salo, so that at the
moment of his death she and her property might
be in safety under the protection of the Cantons.
But the journey to Venice threatened to destroy
this scheme, for it became daily more evident
that the end was not far off.

Vittoria, therefore, strove to persuade him,
before they had got far on their way, to return
to Salo. And, as the sufferings of the invalid in
travelling were greater than he had anticipated,
she had not much difficulty in doing so; though
the difficulty of moving, which drove him
back, seemed to promise ill for the scheme of
getting him to travel very far in the opposite
direction.

On the twelfth of November, however, Orsini
felt a little better. On the thirteenth his
physicians bled him, and left him with somewhat
of better hope that, by strict attention to a
severe system of diet, and extreme temperance,
some degree of restoration might be looked for.
To Vittoria this reprieve was all-important, as
promising a possibility of putting her plan for
escaping into a secure asylum into execution.
The noble patient only knew that he felt better
than he had for many days; and, little in the
habit of suffering a denial to the demands of any
of his appetites, and delighted to find that any
of them were still sufficiently alive to afford him
the means of a gratification, he ordered, as soon
as ever the doctors were out of the house, that
dinner should be served him. Nobody dared to
disobey or to remonstrate; so fine a thing is it
to be too great a man to be contradicted. The
dinner was brought, and once again the gross
body had the pleasure of swallowing. The
prince, says the historian, ate and drank as
usual. But, scarcely had he finished his repast,
before he fell into a state of insensibility; in
which condition he remained till two hours
before sunset, when he expired.

CHAPTER VIII. WIDOWHOOD IN THE SIXTEENTH
CENTURY: ITS PROS AND CONS.

THIS sudden catastrophe was a terrible blow
to Vittoria, who seems to have been perfectly
well aware of all the dangers and difficulties of
her position. "As soon as she saw that the prince
was dead," writes the monk Tempesti, "the ill-
advised Vittoria fell into a swoon; and when
she recovered from it, gave way to utter despair,
oppressed by the tumult of thoughts which all
at once rushed to her mind. She thought of the
loss of her present grandeur, of the necessity of
returning to an obscure life without protectors
and without support, exposed to the rage of the
Orsini, detested by Ludovico, by the Cardinal
dei Medici, and by all that royal family. She
saw vividly before her, her first murdered
husband, who upbraided her with the great love
he had borne her. And this painful thought was
rendered more insupportable by the consideration
of the incomparable greatness of the Peretti
family, now that Sixtus was pope. Overpowered
by these bitter reflections, which thus shaped
themselves to her mind, 'If only I had had
better judgment, I should now be a princess in
the enjoyment of every happiness in Rome! I
should be waited on, courted, worshipped by all
Rome, instead of being an exile, a wanderer,
with treachery around me on all sides, and
odious to Sixtus, whom T have so deeply
outraged!' She felt so keen a pang of shame and
despair, that she seized a pistol to put an end
to her troubles. But her brother Flaminio
(who had joined her immediately after her
husband's death) struck it from her hand."

Her brother Marcello had also joined her at
Salo, and the first step they took was to write
to announce the death to her enemy Ludovico,
who was still, it seems, at Venice, not having
yet departed to enter on his new duties at
Corfu.

Prince Paolo Giordano Orsini had left by his
first wife, Isabella dei Medici, a son, Virginio
Orsini, who was at the time of his father's death
being educated at Florence, under the care of
the duke, his maternal uncle. This young man
was, of course, the natural heir of the deceased
prince; and the will made in favour of his
widow, though it in no wise touched the
immense territorial possessions, nor would, according
to our mode of feeling on such matters,
appear an unreasonably large provision for the
widow of a man of such fortune and position,
was denounced by the family as monstrously
unjust towards the heir. Their first step was to
attempt to set the document aside, legally, on the
ground of its having been made at the instigation
of too violent an affection.