Both of these murders took place in 1576. Isabella's death, as I have elsewhere related, opened the way for the Duke of Bracciano's marriage with Vittoria Accoramboni, which had been prepared by the assassination of her first husband, and which led to her own murder at Padua.[221] Another of Cosimo's daughters, Lucrezia de'Medici, became Duchess of Ferrara, fell under a suspicion of infidelity, and was possibly removed by poison in 1561.[222] The last of his sons whom I have to mention, Don Giovanni, married a dissolute woman of low birth called Livia, and disgraced the name of Medici by the unprincely follies of his life. Eleonora de'Medici, third of his daughters, introduces a comic element into these funereal records. She was affianced to Vincenzo Gonzaga, heir of the Duchy of Mantua. But suspicions, arising out of the circumstances of his divorce from a former wife, obliged him to prove his marital capacity before the completion of the contract. This he did at Venice, before a witness, upon the person of a virgin selected for the experiment.[223] Maria de'Medici, the only child of Duke Francesco, became Queen of France. [Footnote 221: See above, pp. 361-369.] [Footnote 222: Galluzzi, vol. iii. p. 5, says that she died of a putrid fever. Litta again inclines to the probability of poison. But this must counted among the doubtful cases.] [Footnote 223: See Galluzzi, _op. cit._ vol. iv. pp. 195-197, for the account of a transaction which throws curious light upon the customs of the age. It was only stipulated that the trial should not take place upon a Friday. Otherwise, the highest ecclesiastics gave it their full approval.] The history of her amours with Concini forms an episode in French annals. If now we eliminate the deaths of Don Garcia, Cardinal Giovanni, Duke Francesco, Bianca Capello, and Lucrezia de'Medici, as doubtful, there will still remain the murders of Cardinal Ippolito, Duke Alessandro, Lorenzino de'Medici, Pietro Bonaventuri (Bianca's husband), Pellegrina Bentivoglio (Bianca's daughter), Eleonora di Toledo, Francesco Casi (Eleonora's lover), the Duchess of Bracciano, Troilo Orsini (lover of this Duchess), Felice Peretti (husband of Vittoria Accoramboni), and Vittoria Accoramboni--eleven murders, all occurring between 1535 and 1585, an exact half century, in a single princely family and its immediate connections. The majority of these crimes, that is to say seven, had their origin in lawless passion.[224] [Footnote 224: I have told the stories in this chapter as dryly as I could. Yet it would be interesting to analyze the fascination they exercised over our Elizabethan playwrights, some of whose Italian tragedies handle the material with penetrative imagination. For the English mode of interpreting southern passions see my _Italian Byways_, pp. 142 _et seq._, and a brilliant essay in Vernon Lee's _Euphorion_.] CHAPTER VI. SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC MORALS: PART II.