Lorenzo de Medici, and give it to the Count Girolamo." A moment's consideration of the mode in which Sixtus and his son, or nephew, Girolamo, worked in concert and pulled together during the whole of his papacy for the founding and advancement of the family greatness, and a little reflection on the perfect confidence and community of aims and wishes existing between them, will add all the weight which extreme probability can give to the opinion that the Pope was one of the conspirators. [Sidenote: POPE PROBABLY IMPLICATED.] But then arises the question more nearly touching the subject of these pages; What guilty knowledge may Catherine have had of her husband's crime? Did the young bridegroom, within the first year of his married life, take counsel with his girl-wife, at that time within a few weeks of having become for the first time a mother at sixteen years of age, respecting this deed of blood to be done for the furthering of their mutual greatness? Did he seek to gratify her ambition,—certainly no less worldly, less gross in quality, or less a ruling passion than his own,—and obtain her admiring smiles by laying at the proud beauty's feet these high hopes to be realised at the price of a daring deed? Or, when returning from dark plottings with priests and desperate men in the most secret council closet of the Papal palace to the brilliant home of his young wife, did he mutter Macbeth-like, "Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, till thou applaud the deed"? No written word survives to throw the least light on this question. And each reader must judge of the probabilities of the case according to his knowledge and theories of human character. It was certainly Riario's practice, as we shall see, to take counsel of his wife in state matters of less unlawful kind. And thoroughly does she seem to have been capable of seconding and aiding in all the rough business that might fall to the hand of a stirring and ambitious prince in those unquiet times;—truly a help-meet for one who had to hold his own by craft in the council-chamber, as well as by energy and valour in the field. Certainly, bearing in mind the character of the times, and the character of the women, there can be small doubt, that had Catherine found herself called to queen it in fair Florence, she would have "applauded the deed," that placed her there.... Yet ... at sixteen, and at this period of her life at all events, (however much we may at a later time find her wholly busied in virile struggles for power and supreme rule), occupied with the more womanly and more holy cares of wife and mother-hood, it may be fairly hoped that she was innocent of this black guilt, despite the nearness of her connection with Heaven's vicegerent!