But while the marquess was acting so as to cast an eternal stigma on his honour, death was at hand to terminate every ambitious project. His many wounds, and the fatigues he had endured during the long wars, had so shaken his health, that neither his good constitution nor the skill of physicians were any longer able to afford relief. While preparing to die, he desired to take leave of his wife, and sent for her to join him at Milan; but when he found that he should not survive long enough to see her, he sent for his cousin, the marchese del Vasto, and recommended Vittoria to him with the warmest affection. Vittoria, on hearing of her husband's illness, had left Naples to join him. She passed through Rome, where she was received with the greatest honours, but on arriving at Viterbo, she received intelligence of Pescara's death: her grief caused her to forget her religious resignation and fortitude; its excess overwhelmed her with tears and the bitterest anguish. From that time this illustrious lady never ceased to spend every faculty of her soul in lamenting her lost husband. They had been married seventeen years, but had no child; she gave herself up entirely to sorrow; and her faithful heart, incapable of a second attachment to replace one which had begun with her life, cherished only the image of her past happiness, and the hope of its renewal in another life. Her active mind could not repose tranquilly on its misery; she continued to cultivate it, so to render it more worthy of Pescara, and she exercised and amused it by the many sonnets she wrote in his honour. An Italian author has named her second only to Petrarch. Her verses are full of tenderness, of absorbing passion, of truth and life. They fail in poetic fancy; and yet, so much does the reader sympathise in the intense and fond sorrows of this extraordinary woman, that none can criticise, while all are touched by her laments. The best poem in her volume has been attributed to Ariosto, I do not know on what authority; but if written by her, has that elegance of style and concentration of expression, which characterises true poetry. It begins with the affecting exclamation, "I am indeed her you loved! Behold how bitter and eating grief has changed me!--Scarcely could you recognise me by my voice. On your departure, that charm which you called beauty, and of which I was proud, since it was dear to you, left my cheeks, my eyes, my hair!--Yet, ah! how can I live, when I remember that the impious tomb and envious dust contaminates and destroys thy dear and beautiful limbs!" These verses may in their original be very justly compared in pathos and grace to Petrarch:--