The _Amadigi_ was commenced in that genial spot, and the Prince of Salerno complacently anticipated the extended reputation which it promised to his protégé. But the storm, meanwhile, gathered, which was to sweep patron and poet from their palmy state. The Prince, by entanglements which we need not trace, found himself compromised with the Viceroy, Don Pedro Toledo, and, from mingled alarm and pique, sacrificed his vast hereditary stake, by passing over to the French service. This happened in 1552,[*177] and Tasso followed his fortunes without being involved in his treason. After accompanying him to France, he came, in 1554, to Rome, where he took up his abode, in the hope of soon being joined by his wife and family, and of establishing himself there. But she was detained at Naples, for the purpose of recovering part of her husband's property, or at all events her own fortune, which had been escheated on his flight. Her difficulties were increased by the selfish conduct of her own relations, and at length, in the spring of 1556, she died suddenly, not without suspicion of poison. "I have lost," writes her husband, "a woman whose virtues and estimable qualities rendered her beloved and endeared to me as life itself, who was worthy of general admiration, and in whose bosom I had hoped peacefully to pass the closing years of my old age!" But other cares were falling thickly around him. Though joined by his son Torquato, he could never rescue his only other child Cornelia from her maternal relations, and suffered intense anxiety for her welfare. Still nominally in the Prince of Salerno's service, and actually employed as his confidential agent, he found himself estranged from his regard, his correspondence interrupted, and his salary irregularly paid. Bitterly experiencing the not unfrequent guerdon of fidelity to fallen dignitaries, he thus addressed his patron in February, 1556:--