The glowing description of Donna Veronica given by the obsequious courtier of the house of Massa was not ratified by Florentine opinion. One old writer declares: “Donna Veronica was endowed with but small beauty, but _per contra_ with a most violent and imperious temper and a jealous disposition. Her husband, poor man, had small joy with her.” Duke Jacopo Salviata, handsome, gallant and accomplished, a brave soldier and an elegant poet, soon found his loveless life hard to bear, and some eight years after his marriage met (for her misfortune) the beautiful woman popularly called “the fair Cherubim” from her silken, wavy, golden hair and her exquisite colouring. The following account by an anonymous writer of the time, existing in manuscript in the Marucelliana library at Florence, tells the tragic tale graphically, and has, I believe, never been published. “All know of how much perfidy and cruelty a woman is capable when moved by a spirit of vengeance, particularly when roused thereto by offended love. I have often heard recounted a case which happened in the city of Florence, and will describe it as far as my feeble memory permits. There was in Florence a gentleman of the old and honourable family of the Canaccj named Giustino, well-known to me and to many still alive. He was considered a man of but small sense because, having several grown-up children by a first wife and being near seventy years of age, he took as his second wife a young girl called Caterina, inferior to himself in rank but endowed with marvellous beauty, daughter to a dyer from the Casentino. Now Giustino was also the ugliest, the most tiresome and the dirtiest man then in Florence, which encouraged many to solicit the good graces of Caterina who, though apparently leading a modest life, at length they said listened to Lorenzo da Jacopo Serzelli and to Vincenzio Carlini, a young Florentine who has now changed his habit and way of life, being the head of that hospital commonly called Bonifazio. There were also two youths, familiars of Jacopo Salviati Duke of Giuliano the greatest personage for birth, enormous wealth and other admirable qualities in the city of Florence, always excepting the Princes of the ruling house, who a few years before had taken to wife Donna Veronica daughter to Don Carlo Cybo, Prince of Massa and Carrara. This lady had not much beauty, but such pride and conceit that the Duke was driven to seek for comfort elsewhere. Once introduced to Caterina, the Duke, not to excite the suspicions of his wife, excused his occasional absences by an obligation to attend one of those Confraternities which meet only at night, and in Florence are called _Bucche_ (Holes), this one was named after St Anthony and situated in Pinti near Santa Maria Maddalena; and leaving it at a late hour he went to Caterina’s house in Via de’ Pilastri near S. Ambrogio. But he could not prevent this reaching the ears of the Duchess, who with other