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 singular grace, she carried her head as proudly as any Queen.  Her fair hair fell in a rippling cascade far below her waist; her face, hands, and throat, we are told, were “white as lilies,” save for the delicate rose-colour that tinted her cheeks.  Her eyes were large and dark, and of an almost dazzling brilliance; and her full, pouting lips were red and fragrant as a rose.

Such was Bianca Capello on the threshold of womanhood, as you may see her pictured to-day in Bronzino’s miniature at the British Museum, with a loveliness which set the hearts of the Venetian gallants a-flutter before our Shakespeare was in his cradle.  She might, if she would, have mated with almost any noble in Tuscany, had not her foolish, wayward fancy fallen on Pietro Bonaventuri, a handsome young clerk in Salviati’s bank, whose eyes had often strayed from his ledgers to follow her as, in the company of her maid, the Senator’s daughter took her daily walk past his office window.