Page 418 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 79.
The Consequence of Untimely or Timely Deaths

The testimony of Dr. Ludovico Valerius was admitted into evidence. But it didn’t matter.
For Dr. Ludovico Valerius was released from prison when on the 20th of October, 1587, the
Duke and Duchess de’ Medici were found dead at the Villa a Caiano. The coroner deduced that
Bianca had died in the late afternoon of the 20th of October and that Francesco had died only
hours earlier, the previous evening. Francesco’s brother, Cardinal Francisco de’ Medici, was
placed on the Tuscan throne the next day. Citing respect for his beloved brother and sister-in-
law, the new Duke decreed there would be no autopsies of the bodies, which were then buried
the very next day. No further inquests were ordered, and the assumption was that each had
succumbed to an acute intensification of the same tertian fever which had cost so many people
their lives on the island of Sardinia.

Doctor Ludovico Valerius was released from prison and given a full apology from the
newly-appointed Duke, citing that the doctor could not have had the least thing to do with the
tragic deaths at Villa a Caiano, having been some thirty miles away at the time. A large private
(read: secret) pension accompanied the apology, which Valerius willingly took, and slipped away
to live a quiet scholarly life in passionate epistelian correspondence with a young and upcoming
natural philosophy by the name of Robert Boyle (who stole a great deal of Valerius’s words,
uncredited -- which was all very well and good as far as Valerius was concerned, for the
Triumph of Truth and the Scientific Method was more important, much more important, than any
personal vainglory.

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