In this case, although Litta attaches weight to the legend, the balance of evidence is strongly in favor of both brothers having been carried off by a pernicious fever contracted simultaneously during their hunting expedition.[217] Each instance serves however, to show in what an atmosphere of guilt the Medicean princes were enveloped. No one believed that they could die except by fraternal or paternal hands. And the authentic crimes of the family certainly justified this popular belief. I have already alluded to the murders of Ippolito, Alessandro, and Lorenzino. I have told how the Court of Florence sanctioned the assassination of Bianca's daughter by her husband at Bologna.[218] I must now proceed to relate the tragic tales of the princesses of the house. Pietro de'Medici, a fifth of Cosimo's sons, had rendered himself notorious in Spain and Italy by forming a secret society for the most revolting debaucheries.[219] Yet he married the noble lady Eleonora di Toledo, related by blood to Cosimo's first wife. Neglected and outraged by her husband, she proved unfaithful, and Pietro hewed her in pieces with his own hands at Caffaggiolo. Isabella de'Medici, daughter of Cosimo, was married to the Duke of Bracciano. Educated in the empoisoned atmosphere of Florence, she, like Eleonora di Toledo, yielded herself to fashionable profligacy, and was strangled by her husband at Cerretto.[220] [Footnote 216: I refer, of course, to Galluzzi's _Storia del Gran Ducato_, vol. iv. pp. 241-244. Botta's _Storia d'Italia_, Book xiv., and Litta's _Famiglie Celebri_ under the pedigree of Medici.] [Footnote 217: See Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. iii. p, 25, and Botta, _op. cit._ Book xii.] [Footnote 218: See above, p. 381.] [Footnote 219: Litta may be consulted for details; also Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. v. p. 174.] [Footnote 220: It maybe worth mentioning that Virginio Orsini, Bracciano's son and heir, married Donna Flavia, grand niece of Sixtus V., and consequently related to the man his father murdered in order to possess Vittoria Accoramboni. See Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p. 72.]