In July of the same year the Cardinal was, for family reasons, induced to obtain dispensation from Holy Orders and marry the Princess Eleonora Gonzaga of Guastalla, twenty-five years his junior, and the bachelor amusements at Lappeggi came to an end. The young Princess openly manifested her dislike and contempt for her worn-out, gouty and corpulent husband, and he, they say, took this so much to heart that he died after only eight months of married life. Lappeggi was then abandoned and shut up for four years when Cosimo III lent it to Princess Violante of Bavaria, widow of his eldest son. She loved the society of literary men and poets and had a particular admiration for _improvisatori_. Cavaliere Bernadino of Siena, famous for his talent in improvising, often visited her at Lappeggi, where he met the burlesque poet Ghivizzani, and a peasant girl who lived near by called Domenica Maria Mazzetti, surnamed la Menica di Legnaja, who had a great reputation for improvising in “terza rima.” So delighted was Princess Violante with the girl’s talent that she had her taught reading, writing, Latin and music, all which she learnt with ease. After the death of Cosimo, Princess Violante had to give up Lappeggi and went to live in Rome; she took the peasant girl with her and caused her to be crowned with bays on the Campidoglio. In 1816 Lappeggi was sold by public auction to Signor Capacci; he soon resold it to Captain Cambiagi, who was obliged to take down the second story, which was causing the walls to bulge and threatened to destroy the whole house, and at his death the Gheradesca family bought it and turned the royal villa into a lodging-house for poor people. In 1876 it came into the possession of the well-known sculptor Giovanni Dupré, whose daughter, also a sculptress, still owns it. In May 1895 the villa, like so many in the neighbourhood of Florence, suffered severely from an earthquake; but time, neglect and earthquakes have been unable to quite destroy the beauty of the place, and as we stand on the wide broad terrace in front of the villa looking out across the valley of the Chianti towards Siena, the talent of Antonio Ferri the architect is realised, who so happily placed the villa of Lappeggi and its gardens in sight of so fine a scene. The lines of the balustrade, projecting above the garden in a bold half circle, are seen against the hills where they slope down towards the valley, thus forming a scene as austerely beautiful as a drawing by some great Tuscan Master. A wide staircase leads swiftly down on either side of the terrace to the lower level of the garden, which is raised above the vineyards by strong bastions and confined by a low rampart wall. The outline of the beds remain as in Zocchi’s print, but where the pleasure-loving Cardinal once walked with a gay company of Florentines among the brightness of his flowers now are seen only artichokes and potatoes, and the statues