Towards the end of the year he abandoned all hope of recovery, and sent to his wife to desire her to come to him with all speed. He was then at Milan. She set out instantly on her painful journey, and had reached Viterbo on her way northwards, when she was met by the news of his death. It took place on the 25th of November, 1525. He was buried on the 30th of that month, says Giovio, at Milan; but the body was shortly afterwards transported with great pomp and magnificence to Naples. CHAPTER V. Vittoria, a Widow, with the Nuns of San Silvestro.—Returns to Ischia.—Her Poetry divisible into two classes.—Specimens of her Sonnets.—They rapidly attain celebrity throughout Italy.—Vittoria's sentiments towards her Husband.—Her unblemished Character.—Platonic Love.—The Love Poetry of the Sixteenth Century. Vittoria became thus a widow in the thirty-sixth year of her age. She was still in the full pride of her beauty, as contemporary writers assert, and as two extant medals, struck at Milan shortly before her husband's death, attest. One of them presents the bust of Pescara on the obverse, and that of Vittoria on the reverse; the other has the same portrait of her on the obverse, and a military trophy on the reverse. The face represented is a very beautiful one, and seen thus in profile is perhaps more pleasing than the portrait, which has been spoken of in a previous chapter. She was moreover even now probably the most celebrated woman in Italy, although she had done little as yet to achieve that immense reputation which awaited her a few years later. Very few probably of her sonnets were written before the death of her husband. But the exalted rank and prominent position of her own family, the high military grade and reputation of her husband, the wide-spread hopes and fears of which he had recently been the centre in the affair of the conspiracy, joined to the fame of her talents, learning, and virtues, which had been made the subject of enthusiastic praise by nearly all the Ischia knot of poets and wits, rendered her a very conspicuous person in the eyes of all Italy. Her husband's premature and unexpected death added a source of interest of yet another kind to her person. A young, beautiful, and very wealthy widow, gave rise to quite as many hopes, speculations, and designs in the sixteenth century as in any other. [Sidenote: SADOLETO'S BULL.]