In 1885 Count Antonio Pompei, the last direct descendant of this great family, died. These Counts of Illasi, who had received their title from the Venetian Republic early in the sixteenth century (with the obligation of offering every year a wax taper of the value of a ducat to the Church of St Mark in Venice), received many and lasting honours from other states and sovereigns. The Emperor Charles V. conferred the rights of citizens of Milan on them; the same privilege with regard to the town of Mantua was granted by Duke Ferdinand Charles; and Henry IV. allowed them to quarter the lilies of France on their shield. This last Count of Illasi (whose family is now merged in that of the Counts Perez) was a worthy descendant of a long line of jurisconsults, lawyers, writers, poets, ambassadors, generals and knights. He was himself an archæologist, and a writer too on such matters. He had been present in his youth at the demolition of an old wall of the Castle of Illasi, and on that occasion came across a sad and undoubted evidence of a tragedy that had occurred in his family many hundreds of years previously. The skeleton of a woman was found in this wall, heavily laden with chains, and the story goes that it was certainly that of the Countess Ginevra, the wife of Count Girolamo Pompei, whose infidelity to her husband had been avenged in this awful way. No hope of escape for the wife whom he knew false! No mercy for her who had proved unfaithful! Only the chains weighing heavily on her young and lovely limbs; the wall slowly closing in upon her; the lingering death of agony and starvation; the remorse when alone she faced her doom;--can a fate more terrible be imagined? or a vengeance more complete have been exacted?