Hotly pursued on land and sea, narrowly escaping shipwreck, braving
hardships, hunger, and hourly danger of capture, the fugitives at last
reached Marseilles where Marie (Hortense now seeking a refuge in Savoy)
began those years of wandering and adventure, the story of which
outstrips fiction.

Now we find her seeking asylum at convents from Aix to Madrid; now
queening it at the Court of Savoy, with Duke Charles Emmanuel for lover;
now she is dazzling Madrid with the Almirante of Castille and many
another high-placed worshipper dancing attendance on her; and now she is
in Rome, turning the heads of grave cardinals with her witcheries.
Sometimes penniless and friendless, at others lapped in luxury; but
carrying everywhere in her bosom the English pearls, the last gift of
her false and frail Louis.

Thus, through the long, troubled years, until old-age crept on her, the
Cardinal's niece wandered, a fugitive, over the face of Europe,
alternately caressed and buffeted by fortune, until "at long last" the
end came and brought peace with it. As she lay dying in the house of a
good Samaritan at Pisa, with no other hand to minister to her, she
called for pen and paper, and with failing hand wrote her own epitaph,
surely the most tragic ever penned--"Marie Mancini Colonna--Dust and
Ashes."

CHAPTER XVI

BIANCA, GRAND DUCHESS OF TUSCANY

More than three centuries have gone since Florence made merry over the
death of her Grand Duchess, Bianca. It was an occasion for rejoicing;
her name was bandied from lips to lips--"La Pessima Bianca"; jeers and
laughter followed her to her unmarked grave in the Church of San
Lorenzo. But through the ages her picture has come down to us as she
strutted on the world's stage in all her pride and beauty, with a
vividness which few better women of her time retain.

It was in the year 1548, when our boy-King, the sixth Edward, was fresh
to his crown, that Bianca Capello was cradled in the palace of her
father, one of the greatest men of Venice, Senator and Privy Councillor.
As a child she was as beautiful as she was wilful; the pride of her
father, the despair of his wife, her stepmother--her little head full of
romance, her heart full of rebellion against any kind of discipline or
restraint.

Before she had left the schoolroom Capello's daughter was, by common
consent, the fairest girl in her native city, with a beauty riper than
her years. Tall, and with a well-developed figure of s