Veronica lost her husband, after nine years of the happiest union.[42] He gave her an incontrovertible proof of his attachment and boundless confidence, by leaving her his sole executrix, with the government of Correggio, and the guardianship of his children during their minority. Her grief on this occasion threw her into a dangerous and protracted fever, which during the rest of her life attacked her periodically. She says in one of her poems, that nothing but the fear of not meeting her beloved husband in Paradise prevented her from dying with him. She not only vowed herself to a perpetual widowhood, but to a perpetual mourning; and the extreme vivacity of her imagination was displayed in the strange trappings of woe with which she was henceforth surrounded. She lived in apartments hung and furnished with black, and from which every object of luxury was banished: her liveries, her coach, her horses, were of the same funereal hue. There is extant a curious letter addressed by her to Ludovico Rossi, in which she entreats her dear Messer Ludovico, by all their mutual friendship, to procure, at any price, a certain black horse, to complete her set of carriage horses--"piu che notte oscuri, conformi, proprio a miei travagli." Over the door of her sleeping-room she inscribed the distich which Virgil has put into the mouth of Dido. Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores Abstulit: ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro! He who once had my vows, shall ever have, Beloved on earth and worshipped in the grave! But, unlike Dido, she did not "profess too much." She kept her word. Neither did she neglect her duties; but more fortunate in one respect than her fair and elegant friend the Marchesana, she had two sons, to whose education she paid the utmost attention, while she administered the government of Correggio with equal firmness and gentleness. Her husband had left a daughter,[43] whom she educated and married with a noble dower. Her eldest son, Hypolito, became a celebrated military commander; her youngest and favourite son, Girolamo, was created a cardinal. Wherever Veronica loved, it seems to have been with the same passionate _abandon_ which distinguished her character in every thing. Writing to a friend to recommend her son to his kind offices, she assures him that "he (her son) is not only a part of herself--but rather _herself_. Remember," she says, "Ch'egli e la Veronica medesima,"--a strong and tender expression. We find her in correspondence with all the most illustrious characters, political and literary, of that time; and chiefly with Ariosto, Bembo, Molza, Sanazzaro, and Vittoria Colonna. Ariosto has paid her an elegant compliment in the last canto of the Orlando Furioso. She is one among the company of beautiful and accomplished women and noble knights, who hail the poet, at the conclusion of his work, as a long-travelled mariner is welcomed to the shore: