If this is a genuine letter, written on the 16th, it would be worth something towards deciding the question in favour of the first hypothesis. But it seems to be contradicted by a passage in that very curious document, previously cited, which Guerrazzi has printed at length in the notes to his "Isabella Orsini." This author himself, assuredly not prejudiced in favour of the Medici, speaking of this very important letter, which he states to be previously inedited, and generally unknown, and which is preserved in the Imperial Library at Paris, under the No. 10, O 74, says, "From this letter, evidently written by a person, satirical rather than otherwise, and but little favourable to the Medici, and especially to Francesco and to Bianca Capello, we learn how false is the notion that they were poisoned. The kind of life led by them needed no aid to insure their speedy death, since it is easy to perceive that they were in the habit of poisoning themselves daily." [Sidenote: THE DUKE'S DEATH.] I cannot, however, admit that the document in question proves any such thing. It proves certainly that its author, Giovanni Vettorio Soderini, writing apparently very shortly after the events, professes to accept, as it should seem, the statement officially put forth. Yet even this is hardly clear from the very strange manner and phraseology of the letter, which in its opening sentences appears intended to convey some meaning to the writer's correspondent, which is hidden from us. It runs thus: "When in these last days Death rode on his thin and ill–conditioned charger to invest himself with the title of Great.[217] Death obtained at Rome the title of Great, and having obtained this most indecent title, he rode in haste towards Poggio–a–Cajano, and there with irresistible force and equal valour, assaulted the Great Tuscan of Florence and Siena, and brought him down on the 19th of October, 1587, four and a half hours after sunset, and at forty–seven years of age deprived him of life, after strange and unusual writhings,[218] and much howling and groaning. He remained speechless from after dinner till the moment when he was seized with a most burning fever. Signor Pandolfo de' Bardi and Signor Troiano Boba have always asserted that he had caught a pleurisy from too great and unwonted fatigue,"[219] rendered fatal, the writer goes on to say, by the strange and pernicious habits of life indulged in by the Grand Duke, which the letter proceeds to describe at great length.