Addressed to the noble lady Vittoria Colonna on behalf of Bernardo and his sister, this is a remarkable composition for a boy of twelve.[9] His poor father, he says, is on the point of dying of despair, oppressed by the malignity of fortune and the rapacity of impious men.

His uncle is bent on marrying Cornelia to some needy gentleman, in order to secure her mother's estate for himself.
'The grief, illustrious lady, of the loss of property is great, but that of blood is crushing.

This poor old man has naught but my sister and myself; and now that fortune has deprived him of wealth and of the wife he loved like his own soul, he cannot bear that that man's avarice should rob him of his beloved daughter, with whom he hoped to end in rest these last years of his failing age.

In Naples we have no friends; for my father's disaster makes every one shy of us: our relatives are our enemies.

Cornelia is kept in the house of my uncle's kinsman Giangiacopo Coscia, where no one is allowed to speak to her or give her letters.' [Footnote 7: Dated February 13, 1556.] [Footnote 8: See _Opere_, vol.iv.p.