his physicians that he should try certain mineral
waters in the neighbourhood of the Lago di
Garda for his health.

Vittoria and her husband were accompanied
on their journey by that Ludovico Orsini of
whose dealings with the peace officers of the
city the reader has already heard. He, too, as
may readily be imagined, found Rome under
Sixtus the Fifth no longer a desirable residence.
Things were not as they were. The good old
times, when a gentleman could live like a
gentleman, were gone. Rome was going to the
dogs, and he, for his part, did not know what
things were coming to. We have heard similar
grumblings under similar circumstances, with a
similar impression of the accurate truth of the
last of the complainer's assertions.

This Ludovico, who had thus fallen on bad
times, was a cousin of the prince; and being,
as we have seen, a gentleman of high and nice
feelings when the honour of the family was in
question, had been grievously pained and
offended by the misalliance made by the head of
his race. The enmity arising from this circumstance
was, with that chivalrous sense of justice
and fairness which is ever found united with
the feelings that moved Ludovico, exhibited by
him, not towards the powerful and wealthy
head of his house, who "had been bewitched,
poor fellow!" but wholly against Vittoria, the
bewitching. So that, for her at least, this
addition to the family travelling party did
not promise to alleviate any of the
disagreeable circumstances which necessarily
attached to it.

Bearing in mind what journeys were in those
days under the best circumstances, one may
fancy that Vittoria, with her diseased and
shockingly unwieldy husband, and the hostile
kinsman, who hated her as the cause not only
of disgrace to his family, but of this exile from
their homes in the world's capital, did not much
enjoy her "bridal trip." We are inclined to
be decidedly of the opinion of the Roman lady
of rank, and to think that there was nothing, at
all events yet, to repay one for murdering a
husband.

It was in the territory of Venice that Orsini
had determined on seeking a safe asylum and
a home. There had been a connexion of long
standing between the government of the great
republic and the Orsini family, more than one
of the name having held command of the forces
of the Queen of the Adriatic. And when at length
the travellers had arrived within a short
distance of the city, the senate sent messengers
to offer Orsini a guard of honour, and a public
entry into the city. This, however, the prince
declined; and thinking, probably, that under all
the circumstances the less of publicity attending
his movements the better, he determined on not
going to Venice at all. Turning his steps,
therefore, towards Padua, he hired in that city
a magnificent palace for his residence during
the coming winter, and then moving on in the
direction of the Lago di Garda, established
himself for the summer at Salo, a lovely spot at
the head of a little bay on the western shore
of the lake, at no very great distance from
Brescia.

Ludovico Orsini, in the mean time, had gone
on to Venice; and shortly succeeded in obtaining
from the senate the command of the Venetian
troops in Corfu.

Orsini and his wife remained during the rest
of the summer at Salo; where, says the
historian, "he hired a superb villa, and strove by
various pastimes to divert his wife, and his
own profound melancholy caused by his
infirmities of body, which became more and more
troublesome, and by the memories of Rome,
and of his own excesses." The picture of the
"interior" of Vittoria and her princely husband
in their delicious villa in one of the loveliest
spots in Europe, is not hard to imagine. Only
we should be inclined to suggest, that in all
probability the parts sustained in that domestic
drama, as far as the efforts to amuse were
concerned, were rather the reverse of the cast
supposed by the historian. We cannot but
suspect that these " efforts" fell to the share of the
young wife, while the all too unamusable
patient was the princely husband. Perhaps,
also, we might venture to infer that these sweet
summer months on the beautiful shores of the
lake beloved by poets, were not a period of
unmixed connubial felicity to the lady Vittoria.
The reward of ambition had not come yet. But
perhaps it was coming, and that in no very
distant future. That one's newly married husband
should weigh twenty stone, and have a "lupa"
consuming his bloated limbs, may in one point
of view be unfavourable circumstances. But
from a different stand-point they may be very
much the reverse. After all, a well-jointured
widowhood, to be made the most of while yet
in the flower of her age and the pride of her
beauty, with the rank of a princess, and the
revenue of one, might be a better thing than
to be the wife of either a pope's nephew
or a great prince. We can understand that
the position of a wife may well have begun
to show itself to the beautiful and
accomplished Vittoria as not the most desirable in the
world.

Still Vittoria could not disguise from herself
that she had rather difficult cards to play. The
whole of the great Orsini clan were her enemies,
for the same reason that moved the enmity of
Ludovico. From the Pope she had little reason
to expect either favour or protection. The Duke
of Florence, and the powerful Cardinal dei
Medici, his brother, were hostile to her, on the
grounds which have been explained. Her own
eldest brother, the only one of them who had
such a position as could have enabled him to
afford her any support or protection, had also
been estranged from her by the marriage she
had contracted in despite of his prohibition. It
was a dreary outlook into the future for a young
beauty only a few years out of her girlhood.
And as her husband's increasing malady brought
the consideration of it more closely before her,
she fell that she should need all that the most