When the authorities proposed to break the wall of his dungeon and send a priest and surgeon to relieve him, he declared that he would kill himself if they intruded on his misery.

Nothing more was heard of him until 1629, when he was again reported to be at the point of death.

This time he requested the assistance of a priest; and it is probable that he then died at the age of sixty-nine, having survived the other actors in this tragedy, and expiated the passion of his youth by life-long sufferings.
[Footnote 193: I may here allude to a portrait in our National Gallery of a Lucchese Arnolfini and his wife, painted by Van Eyck.] When we return to Sister Umilia, and inquire how the years had worn with her, a new chapter in the story opens.

In 1606 she was still cloistered in S.Chiara, which indeed remained her home until her death.

She had now reached the age of thirty-four.