She returned once more from Viterbo to Rome towards the end of the year 1544, and took up her residence in the convent of Benedictines of St Anne. While there she composed the latin prayer, printed in the note,[211] which has been much admired, and which, though not so Ciceronian in its diction as Bembo might have written, will bear comparison with similar compositions by many more celebrated persons. Several of the latest of her poems were also written at this time. But her health began to fail so rapidly as to give great uneasiness to her friends. Several letters are extant from Tolomei to her physician, anxiously inquiring after her health, urging him to neglect no resources of his art, and bidding him remember that "the lives of many, who continually receive from her their food—some that of the body, and others that of the mind—are bound up in hers."[212] The celebrated physician and poet Fracastoro, was written to in Verona. In his reply, after suggesting medical remedies, he says, "Would that a physician for her mind could be found! Otherwise the fairest light in this world will, from causes by no means clear (_a non so che strano modo_) be extinguished and taken from our eyes."[213] The medical opinion of Fracastoro, writing from a distance, may not be of much value. But it is certain that many circumstances combined to render these declining years of Vittoria's life unhappy. The fortunes of her family were under a cloud; and it is probable that she was as much grieved by her brother's conduct, as by the consequences of it. The death also of the Marchese del Vasto, in the flower of his age, about this time, was a severe blow to her. Ever since those happy early days in Ischia, when she had been to him, as she said, morally and intellectually a mother, the closest ties of affection had united them; and his loss was to Vittoria like that of a son. Then again, though she had perfectly made up her mind as to the line of conduct it behoved her to take in regard to any difficulties of religious opinion, yet it cannot be doubted that the necessity of separating herself from so many whom she had loved and venerated, deserting them, as it were, in their falling fortunes, must have been acutely painful to her. Possibly also conscience was not wholly at rest with her on this matter. It may be that the still voice of inward conviction would sometimes make obstinate murmur against blindfold submission to a priesthood, who ought not, according to the once expressed opinion of the poetess, to come between the creature and his creator. [Sidenote: HER LAST HOURS.] As she became gradually worse and weaker, she was removed from the convent of St. Anne, to the neighbouring house of Giuliano Cesarini, the husband of Giulia Colonna, the only one of her kindred then left in Rome. And there she breathed her last towards the end of February, 1547, in the 57th year of her age.