The amount of public feeling excited in Bologna by Elisabetta Sirani's untimely death, was extraordinarily great. As usual in similar cases, the popular regret took the form of indignation, and demanded an expiatory victim. As usual, also, theories more or less melodramatic, were invented to account for and adorn the misfortune. It was hardly to be supposed that Lucia could have had any spite of her own against her kind young mistress. She must have acted then at the instigation of another; some powerful person no doubt; some great man, whom the young artist had offended probably, by the rejection of amatory advances, said some, or by a satirical use of her pencil, as others supposed. This explained all the irregularity observed in the process. This was why Lucia was not tortured, as by good right she ought to have been. This made it clear why she was set at liberty for a while, till by practising on the doctors, they could be induced to give such testimony as would hush the matter up, with a verdict of death from natural causes. This also, finally, accounted for Lucia's removal for awhile by exile, till the excitement and curiosity of the public should have passed. And as such a theory comfortably explained much which the citizens were at a loss to comprehend, as it supplied abundant food for gossip, and under–breath speculations and guesses, and wise looks, as to the concealed author of all this wickedness, and especially as it made a good story to tell and to write, this became the accredited version, till now it is stated, as a simple fact in artistic manuals and guide–books, that Elisabetta Sirani was poisoned. [Sidenote: DOCTRINE OF POISONS.] The real truth is, that there is not a tittle of evidence in favour of such a supposition, to be opposed to all the insuperable difficulties in the way of convicting Lucia, the only person whom it was found possible to suspect. The only fragment of foundation to the entire fiction consists in Dr. Gallerati's ignorant and learned trash about administered poisons, and inborn poisons. Even he only ventured to incline in favour of the probability of the former in this case. And the direct testimony of Dr. Mattaselani and one of his colleagues, agreeing as it does with the view which any modern medical man would take of the case as reported, viz., that the deceased died of inflamed ulcer in the stomach, may be rightly held to be conclusive on the subject.