achievements did not bring joy to the heart of Vittoria. As Gaston de Foix had paid for the victory of Ravenna with his own life, so the victory of Pavia was destined to put an end to Pescara's career. The young hero lingered some time after the battle, under the tender nursing of his wife, but his wounds were of too serious a nature to be healed by human skill. He died at Milan on the night of December 2, 1525, in a palace near the church of San Nazaro, by the Porta Romana, which he had bought of Giangiacomo Trivulzio two years before the fatal battle. His will, written by the notary Caimi, an authentic copy of which is preserved in the Colonna archives at Rome, is a document of intense historical interest, which I believe has never been published. Pescara's body was transferred from Milan to Naples, and buried in the church of San Domenico Maggiore with stately ceremonies, as became the "generalissimo" of the armies of the Emperor Charles V. After this cruel event, Vittoria, who had been left a widow in the prime of life, of beauty, and of personal attractions, vowed to keep herself faithful to the memory of the husband of whose help and love she had been so prematurely deprived. The sentiments which she cherished to the end of her life vindicate Pescara from the charges brought against him by several historians. He is accused of having plotted against Charles V, because the emperor had taken away from his keeping Francis I, his royal prisoner of war. He is accused, furthermore, of having betrayed to the emperor his fellow conspirators, and of having turned informer as soon as he discovered how little chance there was of carrying the conspiracy through. But if Pescara had really been a double traitor, the young widow would have behaved in a different way. We know that she led almost a monastic life, wandering from convent to convent, and seeking comfort in seclusion. "It seems to me," she says in one of her plaintive sonnets, "that the sun has lost the brightness of its rays, that the stars are paling, the trees losing their mantle of verdure, the fields their flowers, the waters their purity, the breeze its freshness, since the one I loved has left me alone!" Such a manner of life, away from the daily intercourse of society, raised her religious feelings to a high strain, and prepared her to feel the influence of Juan Valdés, one of the most determined and least suspected promoters of reform in Italy, - so little suspected, in fact, that Pope Paul III had attached him to his own court. And yet the unfortunates who had listened to his exhortations, like Carnesecchi, were soon to be burned alive! Vittoria was introduced to Valdés by the duchess of Francavilla, and, like so many enlightened Italians of the period, she did not dream of doing wrong in listening to the denunciations of the reformer against the corruption of the Curia. It may seem strange, but it is certainly a fact, that the Rome of Paul III was just as strong a centre of reforming tendencies as were Naples, Ferrara, Lucca, Bologna, and other such intellectual centres. One could have repeated with the poet, “Thy greatest enemy, O Rome, is at thy gates!" And yet these Italian advocates of the purification of the church were all zealous Catholics, and, far from considering themselves adversaries of the Holy See, they thought they were working for its final triumph. Their heresy, if may use such a term, was altogether unconscious. I It was at this juncture that Vittoria met Michelangelo for the first time, and it seems that after such a long period of sorrow and solitude (1525-36) the pure and intellectual intercourse with the great man raised her spirits once more and made her life more cheerful. The following five years, which she passed in Rome, mark the happiest period in the life of both. Few specimens remain of Vittoria's correspondence with Michelangelo. A letter written by her apropos of a sketch of a crucifix, which the master had submitted for her approval, begins with the graceful address, "Unico maestro Michelangelo et mio singularissimo amico" (Unique master and my most special friend), and ends with a request to be allowed to keep the design as a dear remembrance of their friendship. At this period of her life Vittoria appears to us like a masterpiece of Greek statuary which, after the lapse of centuries, has found no equal. Little short of perfection, she must be considered as the typical representative of the great Italian lady of the sixteenth century, on account of her powerful intellect, sincere piety, unremitting spirit of charity, purity of mind and body, and lifelong devotion to the memory of her lost husband. Trollope, Ferrero, Müller, Benrath, Grimm, Reumont, Corvisieri, Luzio, Rodocanachi, Amante, Fontana, and others have spoken so exhaustively of her connection with the work of reformation in general, and with the spreading of the doctrines of Juan Valdés in particular, that I could very well disregard this chapter of her life, were it not for the fact that the hasty burial of her body in the church of Sant' Anna de' Funari and its subsequent disappearance are distinctly connected with her alleged deviation from the Catholic faith. Vittoria had already expressed her belief in the necessity of a reformation, in the sonnet beginning, Veggo d' alga e di fango omai si carca |