Just then, a courier, hot with haste, brought him a letter--it was from Vittoria. Too agitated to disentangle gently the tress of her fair hair knotted round it, he cut it with his dagger, and devoured rather than read it. Some bird of the air had carried the matter!--she had heard of the plot! No Lady Macbeth was Vittoria, to urge her husband on to guilt--she was his guardian angel, and wrote, with infinite trouble and anxiety, to implore him to think of his hitherto unstained character, and to weigh well what he was about, declaring to him that she had no desire to be the wife of a king, but only of a loyal and upright man. This letter decided Pescara as to his course. He wrote a full confession to the Emperor, who certainly owed him small thanks for it, seeing he believed him to know all already; and the confederates he compromised owed him still less. Pescara was too deep in the mire now, to come out unstained. He returned to his allegiance to the Emperor, but he betrayed his friends, his tempters, accomplices, or whatever name we may give them. The Pope, of course, was above danger; but Morone fell into a regular trap laid for him. Vittoria, far away in her little island, would only hear as much as Pescara chose to tell her, and in his own way. She would suppose his character unscathed, his possession of imperial favour undiminished, since he was shortly afterwards made generalissimo of the forces. Suddenly his health broke down. No one could say why, unless the slight wounds he had received at Pavia had injured him more than was supposed. A troubled mind, probably, was at the root of his mortal sickness. And so, in the prime of life, and loaded with honours, he found all earthly things receding from his grasp, and death hovering in view. In great anguish he sent for Vittoria, begging her to come quickly. She started instantly with all speed, and had travelled as far northwards as Viterbo, when she was met by the news of his death. Thus closed their life's romance. And if she had breathed her last on his grave, she would only be known to us, if known at all, as a constant, affectionate woman. Instead of which, she lived to immortalise his memory in noble verse, to exemplify by her life a rare purity, constancy, intelligence, and devotion, and then to dedicate her pen to the loftiest themes that an evangelical faith could consecrate. No mere idyls or love-verses: her poems are full of deep thought and profound piety. This was the Vittoria, perhaps the most distinguished lady in Italy, whom Giulia Gonzaga, her cousin by marriage, found at Naples, listening to the preaching of Bernardino Ochino. Del Vasto, her boy pupil, was now arrived at man's estate, and her dearest friend. He was married to Maria d'Aragona, the greatest beauty of the day. Like Pescara, he was destined to die early. CHAPTER XI. VALDÉS AND OCHINO.