Now here, in any case, the writer only repeats what the two courtiers Pandolfo de' Bardi, and Troiano Boba said, and does not pretend to any original knowledge on the subject. But may it not be possible that those strange opening sentences may be meant to convey a meaning which the writer dared not express clearly. If Ferdinando poisoned his brother, he rode from Rome to Poggio–a–Cajano to invest himself with the title of Great. If poison was prepared, or other arrangements for carrying out the crime were made at Rome, then he may be said to have obtained at Rome the title of Great, and it may be added that the title was "a most indecent one." But further, this account of the death seems to contradict the statement of the letter published by Galluzzi, and cited above. The expressions seem to be incompatible with the supposition of an illness of several days. Finally, the mention of "strange and unusual contortions and much howling and groaning," seem to indicate that some other cause of death than the natural result of a pleurisy was in the writer's mind. It is further stated, in support of the supposition, that the death was natural, that the bodies were opened and examined after death; that of Bianca in the presence of her daughter and son–in–law. To this it may be remarked in the first place, that the medical science of the time was wholly incompetent to ascertain the cause of death from a post–mortem examination, as will be remarkably exemplified in the following pages of the life of Elizabetta Sirani. In the next place the examiners were the court physicians, in the pay and in the power of the new sovereign. And as to the presence of Pellegrina and Bentivoglio, the fact that Ferdinando should have sought to draw an evidence of his innocence of any foul practice from a circumstance so utterly useless and inconclusive as the presence of two persons wholly ignorant of anatomy and the action of poisons on the body, is rather a presumption against him than otherwise. He must have known perfectly well that had Bianca died by any poison whatever, Pellegrina and Bentivoglio could have been none the wiser for seeing the body opened. [Sidenote: "LA PESSIMA BIANCA."]