Giovanna's
son had followed his mother to the grave; and the child of the slums,
who had been so fruitlessly smuggled into her palace, had been
legitimated.

The only thorn now left in her bed of roses was the enmity of the Grand
Duke's brother, the Cardinal; and her greatest ambition was to win him
to her side. In the autumn of 1787 he was invited to Florence, and as
the culmination of a series of festivities, a grand banquet was given,
at which he had the place of honour, at her right hand. The feast was
drawing near to its end. Bianca, with sparkling eyes and flushed face,
looking lovelier than she had ever looked before, was at her happiest,
for the Cardinal had at last succumbed to her bright eyes and honeyed
words. It was the crowning moment of her many triumphs, when life left
nothing more to desire.

Then it was, at the supreme moment, that tragedy in its most terrible
form fell on the scene of festivity and mirth. While Bianca was smiling
her sweetest on the Cardinal she was seized by violent pains, "her mouth
foams, her face is distorted by agony; she shrieks aloud that she is
dying. Francesco tries to go to her aid, but his steps are suddenly
arrested. He too is seized by the same terrible anguish. A few hours
later both she and he breathe their last breath."

"Poison" was the word which ran through the palace and soon through
Florence from blanched lips to blanched lips. Some said it was the
Cardinal who had done the deed; others whispered stories of a poisoned
tart designed by Bianca for the Cardinal, who refused to be tempted.
Whereupon the Grand Duke had eaten of it, and Bianca, "seeing that her
plot had so tragically miscarried, seized the tart from her husband's
hand and ate what was left of it."

The truth will never be known. What we do know is that within a few
hours of the last joke and the last drained glass of that fatal banquet
the bodies of Francesco and Bianca were lying in death side by side in
an adjacent room, the door of which was locked against the eyes of the
curious--even against the physicians.

In the solemn lying-in-state that followed Bianca had no place.
Francesco alone, by his brother's orders, wore his crown in death. As
for Bianca, her body was hurried away and flung into the common vault of
San Lorenzo, with the light of two yellow wax torches to bear it
company, and the jibes and jeers of Florence for its only requiem.

CHAPTER XVII

RICHELIEU, THE ROUE

In