The marriage was celebrated in 1550, probably in the last months of that year. A "marriage prayer," in eight Greek verses by Olympia, has been preserved among her works. Her latest biographer[86] says of these lines, that they are a "chant of Pindar repeated by an echo of the Christian revival at Ferrara"—a performance, one would think, nearly equivalent to that of the well–known Irish echo that answered "How do you do?" by "Pretty well, I thank you." The lines in question touch, in very irreproachable Greek, on the analogy between marriage and the mystic union of Christ with the souls of the faithful, and are remarkable only as indicating how complete was the change in the tone of the poet's mind, since she classicalised on death in the manner we have seen in a former chapter. [Sidenote: PARTING WITH HER HUSBAND.] Deep–felt and complete as we may suppose the happiness Olympia and her husband felt at their union, the marriage must have partaken more of a solemn than of a festive character. There were many difficulties and uncertainties yet before them. To remain in Ferrara, heretics as they were, whose heresy was every day becoming dearer to them, and the open profession of it a craving desire; when Fannio was daily expecting to be brought out of his dungeon to a martyr's death; when the Inquisition was craving for fresh victims; and when the marriage itself was deemed an offence by the Duke, was out of the question. Yet it was hard to leave a mother and sisters; and that rough northern land across the mountains, where freedom of conscience might indeed be hoped for, nevertheless was not itself by any means in a condition to offer her a secure and quiet home. So far was this from being the case, that Grünthler deemed it necessary to submit to a separation from his wife almost immediately after his marriage, that he might, before taking her to Germany, go thither alone to fix on, and prepare, a home for her. His hope was to obtain a professorial chair in some of the medical schools of Bavaria or the Palatinate, and to be able to return to Olympia in the spring of 1551. In the meantime, he had the great consolation of leaving her under the protection of Lavinia della Rovere; whose considerable influence, though it seems to have been exercised in vain to obtain Olympia's restoration to the good graces of the ducal family, yet probably sufficed to prevent any measures of active persecution against her. Here is the letter above mentioned in its entirety. Perhaps some reader may like to see, that a young wife's honeymoon letter was in 1550 pretty much the same thing, word for word, as a similar effusion in 1850 might be. Of no letter on any other topic, three hundred years old, could the same be said.