"Me now Cocytus bounds with squalid reeds, With muddy ditches, and with deadly weeds, And baleful Styx encompasses around With nine slow-circling streams the unhappy ground."[57] [Footnote 57: "Me circum limus niger et deformis arundo Cocyti, tardaque palus, inamabilis unda, Alligat, et novies Styx interfusa coercet." VIRG. _Georg._ iv. 478.] To the Duchess and to his nephew were chiefly addressed his parting injunctions, the object of which was to recommend them to each other's affection and confidence, to comfort them under their approaching bereavement, and to counsel implicit obedience on the part of Francesco Maria towards his uncle the Pope. It seems enough to allude thus generally to his closing scene, for the accounts which we have from Castiglione and Federigo Fregoso, one a spectator, the other a dear friend, who quickly reached the spot, are unfortunately disguised in Ciceronianisms, necessarily inappropriate to a Christian death-bed, and in which the spirit of his words has probably evaporated.[58] We may, however, trust that "They show The calm decay of nature, when the mind Retains its strength, and in the languid eye Religious holy hope kindles a joy;" for we have seen him neither indifferent nor neglectful of the observances dictated by his Church, and, ere the vital spark fled, he received its rites and besought the prayers of the bystanders. His passage from mortality was peaceful, and death, which he considered desirable, spread like a gentle slumber over his stiffening limbs and composed features. At midnight of the 11th of April his spirit was released from its shattered tenement.[*59] Over the agonised and uncontrolled lamentations of the Duchess we draw a veil; the description of such scenes must ever degenerate into common-place generalities. She felt and suffered as was natural to the best wives prematurely severed from the most attached of husbands.