She was accused--falsely, as it afterwards appeared from Girolamo's confession--of an improper intimacy with the Count Ercole Bevilacqua.

I may add that Count Ercole Trotti's father, Alfonso, had murdered his own wife, Michela Granzena, in the same villa.[213] [Footnote 210: Mutinelli, _Storia Arcana_, vol.ii.p.

64.] [Footnote 211: _Ib._ vol.ii.p.

162.] [Footnote 212: _Ib._ vol.i.p.

343.] _The Medici_.
The history of the Medicean family during the sixteenth century epitomizes the chief features of social morality upon which I have been dwelling in this chapter.