stabbed through the back, and strangled with
cords--dead--with eyes of horror gazing wildly at the pale moon! No
shrift had they, but bitter tears were shed by tender sympathisers, and
accusing fingers were pointed at the Count.

What cared he! He merely shrugged his shoulders and sardonically hinted
that as he had brought his wife from Florence--from Florence, too, had
he learned how to take personal vengeance upon a faithless spouse and
her accomplice! The dark deed was done on 21st September 1589, and Count
Ulisse lived on with his evil conscience and his new wife till 1618,
when he, too, fell in Bologna by an assassin's blade--just retribution
for the foul murder of lovely Pellegrina Buonaventuri.

CHAPTER VI

ELEANORA DEGLI ALBIZZI

SFORZA ALMENI

CAMMILLA DE' MARTELLI

_Pathetic Victims of Fateful Passion_

"_Di fare il piacere di Cosimo_"--To serve for Cosimo's pleasure! In
such words, an immoral father condemned his lovely daughter to feed the
unholy lust of the "Tyrant of Florence"--Moloch was never better served.

Eleanora and Cammilla, cousins after the flesh, were each dedicated as a
_cosa di Cosimo_--the property of Cosimo. If he did not murder their
bodies, he slew their souls--that was the manner of the man, the fashion
of his time.

Romantic attachments, full of thrilling pathos, ran then like golden
threads through the vulgar woof and web of woe and death. Someone has
said that "Love and murder are next of kin"; true, indeed, was this what
time Eleanora and Cammilla were fresh young girls in Florence. They were
each made for love, and love they had; but that love was the embrace of
a living death, selfish, cruel, and damning. Better, perhaps, had they
died right out by sword or poison than suffer, as they did, the
extremity of pathos--the shame of illicit love!

* * * * *

The tragedy of Eleanora degli Albizzi was, perhaps, the most callous and
the most pathetic of all those lurid domestic vicissitudes which traced
their source to the "Tyrant of Florence," Cosimo I., Grand Duke of
Tuscany.

She was not the only Eleanora whose name as, alas, we know, spelled
misfortune. Eleanora de Toledo of the broken heart, and Eleanora de
Garzia de Toledo of the bleeding heart, awaited in Paradise Eleanora
degli Albizzi of the heart of desertion.

"_Albizzi o Medici_?" had once and again divided the power of Florence,
but in the course of high play in the game