receive and educate in his family his niece, and eventually to make her his consort, on condition of her being declared heiress of all the Duke's allodial and personal property. To secure the intimate alliance and support of the Medici had, as we have seen, long been the cherished policy of Francesco Maria, and the importance of a connection sufficiently powerful to maintain the rights of the Princess, in that revolution which must succeed immediately upon his death, was self-evident. But there was another consideration equally cogent, for, on the extinction of her father's family, nature and law pointed out her maternal cousin as the most suitable guardian of her childhood and education. Having decided in favour of a proposal at once advantageous to his granddaughter, and releasing him from one of the greatest anxieties of his position, the Duke lost no time in sending her to the court of Tuscany, under protection of Count and Countess Mammiani. Indeed, these arrangements were all concluded within four months of his son's death. On the 6th of August, the conclave elected Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, of a family originally Florentine, who had only attained his fifty-fifth year; a man respectable at once from his talents, his habits of business, and his moral character. It was observed that, during the sittings of the conclave, a hive of bees swarmed under one of their windows, an incident rendered notable from the Barberini carrying that insect in their arms. On ascending the chair of St. Peter, the first business which occupied Urban VIII. was the important accession to the ecclesiastical state promised by the Prince of Urbino's death. There was no legal doubt that the fief, limited to the male line of Guidobaldo II., must lapse on that of the old Duke; but the struggles whereby church vassals had formerly supplied, by steel or gold, similar defects of constitutional title, were not forgotten, and the College of Cardinals looked upon the infant Princess as a subject of keen interest.[*110] It was, therefore, not without jealousy that they learned her sudden betrothal to so powerful a sovereign; and the Pontiff's remonstrances, though avowedly grounded on the conclusion of that important transaction without enabling him to display his friendly respect for the parties, were probably intended to keep the arrangement open for after cavil. A brief interval supplied new grounds for anxiety, on the arrival of a messenger from Francesco Maria with tidings of an overture on the part of the Emperor Ferdinand II., directly at variance with the pretensions of the Holy See. Ferdinand had accompanied his condolence with a proposal that the Duke should recognise the imperial title to the countships of Montefeltro and Castel Durante on his death, as being original fiefs of the empire, and offered to renew the investiture of these in favour of the infant heiress. But, faithful to his ecclesiastical allegiance, the Duke courteously declined availing himself of