, Alfonso, had murdered his own
wife, Michela Granzena, in the same villa.[213]

[Footnote 210: Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p. 64.]

[Footnote 211: _Ib._ vol. ii. p. 162.]

[Footnote 212: _Ib._ vol. i. p. 343.]

_The Medici_.

The history of the Medicean family during the sixteenth century
epitomizes the chief features of social morality upon which I have been
dwelling in this chapter. It will be remembered that Alessandro de'
Medici, the first Duke of Florence, poisoned his cousin Ippolito, and
was himself assassinated by his cousin Lorenzino. To the second of these
crimes Cosimo, afterwards Grand Duke of Tuscany, owed the throne of
Florence, on which, however, he was not secure until he had removed
Lorenzino from this world by the poignard of a bravo. Cosimo maintained
his authority by a system of espionage, remorseless persecution, and
assassination, which gave color even to the most improbable of
legends.[214]

[Footnote 213: _I Guarini, Famiglia Nobile Ferrarese_ (Bologna,
Romagnoli, 1870), pp. 83-87.]

[Footnote 214: In addition to the victims of his vengeance who perished
by the poignard, he publicly executed in Florence forty-two political
offenders.]

But it is not of him so much as of his children that I have to speak.
Francesco, who reigned from 1564 till 1587, brought disgrace upon his
line by marrying the infamous Bianca Capello, after authorizing the
murder of her previous husband. Bianca, though incapable of bearing
children, flattered her besotted paramour before this marriage by
pretending to have borne a son. In reality, she had secured the
co-operation of three women on the point of child-birth; and when one of
these was delivered of a boy, she presented this infant to Francesco,
who christened him Antonio de'Medici. Of the three mothers who served
in this nefarious transaction, Bianca contrived to assassinate two, but
not before one of the victims to her dread of exposure made full
confession at the point of death. The third escaped. Another woman who
had superintended the affair was shot between Florence and Bologna in
the valleys of the Apennines. Yet after the manifestation of Bianca's
imposture, the Duke continued to recognize Antonio as belonging to the
Medicean family; and his successor was obliged to compel this young man
to assume the Cross of Malta, in order to exclude his posterity from the
line of princes.[215]

[Footnote 215: See Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol. ii. p