In favour of either the second or third hypothesis there is no direct evidence whatever. If Ferdinando de' Medici had to be tried for the murder, he must according to all the evidence we have, be most undoubtedly acquitted. But nobody at the time seems to have believed in the two deaths having happened from natural causes. Then the popular hypothesis was the second. Notwithstanding the certificates of court physicians, the statements of the progress of the malady, and the post–mortem examinations, people found it very difficult to believe that two such opportune deaths should occur all but simultaneously by natural causes, the assigned nature of which did not admit of any question of contagion. If anybody was so unlucky as to have conceived the idea, that this death might have "come riding" to Poggio–a–Cajano from Rome, of course he very carefully suppressed all utterance of it. But it was universally believed that Bianca was capable of any amount of treachery, craft, and crime. The story of the poisoned pastry, and the dramatic events it gave rise to, made exactly one of those narratives, rich in varied emotions and in retributive justice, which storytellers like to tell, and their audience like to hear. And it was perfectly safe to cast as much odium as any brain could imagine on the hated Bianca. To do so indeed was to fall in with the court humour, and to share the feelings of the new sovereign, who would never speak of her, or permit her to be spoken of as the late Grand Duchess, and who never himself named her otherwise, than as "the wretch Bianca,"—_la pessima Bianca_.[220] The second hypothesis therefore was the popular one among those who could not accept the official account of the matter as credible, and has continued to be the received version with the numerous novelists and dramatists who have made increment of the tragedy. In favour of the third, it has been already admitted that no tittle of _direct_ evidence can be produced. The value of the guess hazarded at the meaning conveyed in those enigmatical phrases at the commencement of Signor Soderini's letter will be different to different minds. Signor Guerrazzi, the discoverer and first editor of this extraordinary letter, has evidently not been struck by the idea that any such sense could be seen in the words. On the contrary, he considers the letter as conclusive against the poisoning, either by the Cardinal or by Bianca. But it may be stated on the other hand, that the interpretation above suggested has seemed probable to other Italians versed in the history of the time, and practised in extracting their secrets from the wrappages in which writers who lived under the survey of unscrupulous despots were commonly wont to conceal their meaning.