It was a great charge, but she struggled bravely with her difficulties. The great questions at issue between the Reformers and their foes addressed themselves, also, to her attention, more forcibly than heretofore; connected as they were with the fate of one in whom her friend, the Princess Lavinia, took deep interest. A young man, named Fannio, was consigned to the dungeons of Ferrara, for adhering to the reformed opinions. To his wife and sister, who came to see him in prison, he said, "Let it suffice you that, for your sake, I _once_ denied my Saviour! Had I then had the knowledge which, by the grace of God, I have acquired since my fall, I would not have yielded to your entreaties. Go home in peace!" Weeping, they went. He lay two years in prison, "to the furtherance of the Gospel," inasmuch as "his bonds in Christ were manifest in all the palace." Faithful friends resorted to him thither; among them were Lavinia and Olympia. The peril of their visits perhaps added a little zest to the impression of his teaching. In that gloomy cell, he and they and a little handful of the faithful, prayed, and read the Scriptures, and broke bread, and sang hymns, just as in the early times. When it was found that many persons of rank, besides Lavinia, stole to these meetings, while his fellow-prisoners were so wrought upon by his heavenly-mindedness that they declared they had never known what true liberty and happiness were till they found them in a prison--Fannio was put into solitary confinement. Though visitors were rigorously excluded, he reached them with his letters; notwithstanding the repeated change of his gaolers. With what intense interest must Lavinia and Olympia have pored over these letters! In 1550, Fannio was brought to the stake, and, being first strangled, was committed to the flames. He was the first of the Reformers who laid down his life for his faith. Olympia, meanwhile, bereft of court favour, led a troubled and painful life. She wrote to Celio Curio--"After my father's death, I remained alone; abandoned by those who ought to have supported me. My sisters were involved in my misfortune, and only reaped ingratitude for the devotion and services of years. How deeply I felt it, you may readily conceive. Not one of those who had been our friends in former times had now the courage to show the least interest in us." She knew and he knew, indeed, that the Princess Lavinia was a noteworthy exception. This cheerless loneliness was broken by the constancy of a young Bavarian student of medicine, named Grünthler, who had already offered his hand to her and been refused. He now renewed his addresses: his devotedness touched her heart, and she accepted him. They were married very quietly in 1550. "Neither the resentment of the Duke," she wrote to Curio, "nor all the miserable circumstances which surrounded me, could induce him to abandon his desire to make me his wife. So great and true a love has never been surpassed."