He lay in state during two days, arrayed in the ducal mantle of silver tissue lined with purple taffetas; on his head a coronet of gold surmounted the velvet cap of maintenance; the collar of the Fleece was on his neck, the ring on his finger, the sceptre in his hand. In these trappings of sovereignty, a last tribute to the station which he had quitted for ever, and which none remained to fill, he was by his own desire interred. Seven years before, he had prepared for himself an unornamented tomb under the holy-water vase in the church of the Crucifixion, at Castel Durante. There he chose his final resting-place, amid sites endeared as the scene of his youthful sports, the relaxation of his busy manhood, the retreat of his chastened age. Thither he was escorted by a procession of five hundred gentlemen, besides a numerous attendance of priests and monks. Each of the latter received a scudo and a pound of wax; and by one of them, Padre Ludovico Munaxho, the funeral oration was pronounced. At his own desire, this prayer, from the liturgy of his church, was inscribed under the front, in lieu of epitaph:--"O Lord, incline thine ear to our prayers, wherein we supplicate thy mercy, and that thou wouldst establish in peace, and in the realms of the elect, the soul of thy servant Francesco Maria II., Duke of Urbino, which thou hast summoned from this life, and that thou wouldst ordain it to be received into the company of thy saints, through Christ our Saviour. Amen. He died in the year of God MDCXXXI., and of his age LXXXIII." * * * * * [Illustration: FRANCESCO MARIA II., DUKE OF URBINO _From a picture once in the possession of James Dennistoun_] The character of Francesco Maria presented many strange contradictions. The manifold inconsistencies of his precepts and practice have already been pointed out; and the opinions of his contemporaries varied, not only from the estimate with a perusal of such memorials as I have discovered of his reign would lead one to form, but also from each other. It may be well to give the judgments of those who had best opportunities of forming just conclusions, leaving the reader to reconcile their discrepancies. Donato, his chief counsellor in the Devolution of his state, whose experience was chiefly of his latter years, writes of him as follows:--