Bianca, though only partially conscious, knew exactly what the Cardinal meant, and railed at him for his cruelty. In delirium she made passionate appeals to Francesco, and wildly denounced her treacherous brother-in-law. Her cries resounded through the villa, but they stirred no feeling of regret or compunction in Ferdinando's breast. He gloated, fiend-like, over his victim's sufferings. It was not by chance he procured the potent poison he had used. The empiric-medico at Salerno had been well paid to furnish a potion that should, by its slow but deadly action, prolong the tortures of the sufferers! A less vindictive murderer would have secured his victim's quick release, but, during ten terrible days of sickness, delirium and agony, he witnessed the inevitable progress of his vengeance! If Cosimo, his father, had called his young son Garzia "Cain," what would not he have called the man, the bloodthirsty Ferdinando? Bianca's illness followed precisely the course of the Grand Duke's. The tearful faces of her attendants, and the noise of preparations for his burial, conveyed to her in calmer moments the terrible truth, and she had no longer any wish to live--parted from Francesco. Bianca was already dead. She called the bishop and made a full confession of her whole life's story, hiding nothing, palliating nothing. Out of a full heart she spoke--that heart which had been the source of all her love and her happiness, her misery and her sin. Antonio she commended to Bishop Abbioso's care, and begged him send the news of her death and Francesco's to Cavaliere Bartolommeo Cappello at Venice. After absolution and last communion, Bianca Cappello, "Daughter of Venice," Grand Duchess of Tuscany, breathed her last in peace--the delirium having abated--on the evening of 30th October, just two days after her husband. A _post-mortem_ examination, or at least the form of one, upon the Grand Duke revealed, it was said, advanced disease of the liver, the consequences of his unwisdom in the use of cordials and elixirs! With the connivance of the Court physicians, Ferdinando put out a proclamation that the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess--he was compelled to use the title then in speaking of Bianca--had died from "attacks of malarial fever, induced by the unhealthy atmosphere of Poggio a Caiano." * * * * * Francesco's obsequies were attended by all the stately ceremonies usual in the Medici family. Conveyed into Florence by the _Misericordia_ on the evening of his death, his body was exposed for three days in state in the Palazzo Pitti, and then carried in solemn procession to the church of San Lorenzo for burial.