"To exercise the most powerful influence in a splendid court; to receive daily homage, and something more solid than homage, from all who have favours to ask, justice to seek, or injustice to pay for; to dispense promotions, reward friends and crush enemies; all this is worth something. To be the courted patroness of the relatives who so loudly complained of my having disgraced them, to dispense my bounty to the father and brother who denounced me, and to be the means of sustaining and advancing the grandeur of the family whose daughter I am; all this is worth still more. To become, what, if fate do not play me false, I will become, and make the Ten themselves bow before the poor outlawed exile! Ay, that indeed would be more again. It is something, too, by the blaze of my beauty and the glitter of my magnificence, to thrust back that pale, proud Austrian woman into cold obscurity. She, indeed, to think of being a wife to Francesco! She to dream of taking in charge such a nature as his! She to attempt the task of comprehending, sympathising with, soothing, managing, ay, and mastering those surging passions, that wilful mind, and fitful heart! She! It is a part cast, methinks, for an actress of other powers than hers! But what if it should prove too difficult for my own? She, indeed, is at least secure in the frozen dignity of her place. She is the Grand Duchess, and needs to practise no such ruling of the storms to hold her safe position. But for me! To rule them, or to perish in them, is the only alternative. If I cease to rule but for a day, I fall, and am crushed into the dust! That is the condition on which I hold my place in Florence! And the Saints know how many waking nights and anxious days the holding of it thus far has cost me! And the task seems growing from day to day more arduous. The Duke's deepening melancholy and discontent at his childlessness is dangerous—very dangerous. May he not seek elsewhere for that which I have failed to give him! Francesco loves me;—I think he loves me;—that is, he has need of me. But should some more painfully felt need require that I should be sacrificed, trampled into dust, burned at the stake, torn limb from limb; my Francesco's love, methinks, would hardly save me. Had I but a child, could I but be the mother of a son to stand between him and the Cardinal, I should, I think, be safe!" [Sidenote: A BOLD STEP.] Somewhat to this tune, we may suppose, Bianca's ruminations must have often run during the early months of that fatal summer of 1576; till at length the urgency of the case, arising from the Duke's increasing gloom and discontent, determined her to adopt the dangerous expedient of counterfeiting the maternity which nature denied her.