Toward the end there was the inevitable
rumour of acqua tofana, and the populace cried out that the Jesuits were
at work again. It seems more probable, however, that his Highness, who
had assisted at the annual festival of the Madonna del Monte, and had
mingled on foot with the swarm of devotees thronging thither from all
parts, had contracted a pestilent disorder from one of the pilgrims.
Certain it is that death came in a dreadful form. The Duchess, alarmed
for the health of Prince Ferrante, fled with him to the dower-house by
the Piana; and the strange nature of his Highness's distemper caused
many to follow her example. Even the Duke's servants, and the quacks
that lived on his bounty, were said to have abandoned the death-chamber;
and an English traveller passing through Pianura boasted that, by the
payment of a small fee to the palace porter, he had obtained leave to
enter his Highness's closet and peer through the doorway at the dying
man. However this may be, it would appear that the Duke's confessor--a
monk of the Barnabite order--was not to be found when his Highness
called for him; and the servant sent forth in haste to fetch a priest
returned, strangely enough, with the abate Crescenti, whose suspected
orthodoxy had so long made him the object of the Duke's detestation. He
it was who alone witnessed the end of that tormented life, and knew upon
what hopes or fears it closed.
Meanwhile it appeared that the Duchess's precautions were not unfounded;
for Prince Ferrante presently sickened of the same malady which had cut
off his father, and when the Regent, travelling post-haste, arrived in
Pianura, he had barely time to pass from the Duke's obsequies to the
death-bed of the heir.
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