It was in consequence of these misfortunes, and of that remarkable "solidarity" which, as has been before observed, united in those days the members of a family in their fortunes and reverses, that Vittoria quitted Rome, probably towards the end of 1540, and retired to Orvieto. But the loss of their brightest ornament was a misfortune which the higher circles of Roman society could not submit to patiently. Many of the most influential personages at Paul III.'s court visited the celebrated exile at Orvieto, and succeeded ere long in obtaining her return to Rome after a very short absence.[207] And we accordingly find her again in the eternal city in the August of 1541. There is a letter written by Luca Contile,[208] the Sienese historian, dramatist and poet, in which he speaks of a visit he had paid to Vittoria in Rome in that month. She asked him, he writes, for news of Fra Bernardino (Ochino), and on his replying that he had left behind him at Milan the highest reputation for virtue and holiness, she answered, "God grant that he so persevere!" [Sidenote: WOULD NEVER QUIT THE CHURCH.] On this passage of Luca Contile's letter, Visconti and others have built a long argument in proof of Vittoria's orthodoxy. It is quite clear, they say, that she already suspected and lamented Ochino's progress towards heresy, and thus indicates her own aversion to aught that might lead to separation from the church of Rome. It would be difficult, however, to show that the simple phrase in question had necessarily any such meaning. But any dispute on this point is altogether nugatory; for it may be at once admitted that Vittoria did not quit, and in all probability would not under any circumstances have quitted, the communion of the Church. And if this is all that her Romanist biographers wish to maintain, they unquestionably are correct in their statements. She acted in this respect in conformity with the conduct of the majority of those eminent men whose disciple and friend she was during so many years. And the final extinction of the reformatory movement in Italy was in great measure due precisely to the fact that conformity to Rome was dearer to most Italian minds than the independent assertion of their own opinions. It may be freely granted that there is every reason to suppose that it would have been so to Vittoria, had she not been so fortunate as to die before her peculiar tenets were so definitively condemned as to make it necessary for her to choose between abandoning them or abandoning Rome. But surely all the interest which belongs to the question of her religious opinions consists in the fact that she, like the majority of the best minds of her country and age, assuredly held doctrines which Rome discovered and declared to be incompatible with her creed.