"Love enters the heart through many strange portals, and Henry of Navarre knows you better than you suspect. Your portrait sent him by your uncle is engraved upon his heart. Love gives a mysterious power of second sight, and I doubt not that the King of France sees you at this moment even as I do, and that Marie de' Medici is for him as for me the embodiment of all womanly perfection." "The Grand Duchess is approaching," she said in a low voice, "and Henry of Navarre is a forbidden topic--talk of anything else--talk of art." The subject was apropos, for they were in the garden and Ferdinando's collection of masterpieces was all about them, but the Grand Duchess had caught his closing phrase. "Who is it," she asked drily, "who has the honour of being the embodiment of the Earl of Essex's ideal of womanly perfection?" "The Medicean Venus," Brandilancia replied unhesitatingly, with a wave of the hand which took in that famous statue and also the lady at his side. The Grand Duchess sniffed, she was silenced but not deceived, and she remained at her niece's side through the remainder of the afternoon. As several guests joined them and discussed with great connoisseurship the merits of the sculpture Brandilancia's thoughts wandered to his host. "What manner of man was this Ferdinando de' Medici who had converted his garden pleasance into a museum?" Mentally reviewing what he had heard of the Grand Duke it seemed that all that was most admirable in the race must focus in its present representative. But Marie de' Medici had let fall a disquieting remark which pointed to another side to his character. "See, your grace," she had said to Brandilancia, "here is a favourite play of mine, _Il Moro di Venezia_, a sad tragedy but it stirs one's blood to read it. Perhaps it stirs mine because it is not long since tragedies like that have been enacted in my own family. Love and jealousy and revenge are a part of our heritage, and at times I long to come into my birthright, for such existence as I now lead is not life." This half-revelation so impressed Brandilancia that he could not expel it from his mind, and when next alone with the secretary, Malespini, he begged for an explanation. "Tell me something," he begged, "of the character of the Grand Duke. I do not ask you to divulge private matters, but only such as are public property and with which I would be acquainted were I not so newly arrived in Italy." Malespini gave him a compassionate glance. "I thought that all the world knew that my master was a child of Satan," he replied coolly. "The Signorina told you truly. He caused the death of his two sisters-in-law, and was responsible for the murder of his own sister, goading her husband the Duke of Bracciano to the act. It is commonly reported also that the Signorina's father, the former Grand Duke of Tuscany, together with his wife, Bianca Capello, were poisoned by Ferdinando, though he made the act appear to be that of the murdered Duchess."