The days that thus passed, however, could have been but very few. And the remainder of the strange story, if restricted to such facts as are certain, and universally admitted, may be told with a brevity that will not appear more abrupt to the reader, than were the events sudden and startling to those who witnessed them. On the 19th of October, about nine o'clock in the evening, the Grand Duke Francesco died. And on the following morning—(writers differ about the hour)—Bianca followed him. Ferdinando succeeded without disturbance to the throne. Francesco was interred, by his orders, with all due pomp in the family mausoleum, under the dome of San Lorenzo; and Bianca was, also by his orders, thrown, wrapped in a sheet, into the common receptacle for the bodies of the poor, under the nave of that church. These are the entire ascertainable facts of the case. But it will be interesting to examine the different opinions which have prevailed respecting them among Florentine historians; and, after weighing their conjectures, to judge for ourselves as to the balance of probabilities for or against them. CHAPTER VIII. Three hypotheses respecting the deaths of Francesco and Bianca—The official version of the story—The novelist's version of the story—A third possibility—Circumstances that followed the two deaths—Bianca's grave; and epitaphs for it by the Florentines—Ferdinand's final success. As the record of all that can claim to be undoubted fact in the history of these strange events is startlingly brief, so would an account of all the suppositions, speculations, and conjectures, to which they have given rise, in perpetually succeeding crops from that time to this, be interminably long. Historians, apologists, antiquarians, archive–diggers, dramatists, novelists, have discussed and re–discussed the matter, settled it in different ways, according to their partialities or dispositions, and made up their minds to one or the other theory. But the only real result of their labours is the certainty, that the matter must rest in total uncertainty ever more, and that each reader must estimate for himself the probabilities of the case according to his own views and theories of human character, and its springs of action. The different opinions that have been held respecting these mysterious deaths, may be reduced to the following three distinct hypotheses. First. The Grand Duke died of a tertian fever, caught by exposing himself to great fatigue under the autumnal sun, and rendered fatal by his refusal to submit to proper medical treatment, and his adoption in its place of a most preposterous system of ice–cold drinks and other applications, all acting on a constitution already ruined by previous excesses. Bianca died of a similar complaint, rendered fatal in her case also by the permanent mischief her system had suffered from all the tricks she had played upon it.