Stimigliano, and went to live upon his domains near Rome.

Two years later, Pierluigi Orsini was stabbed by one of his grooms at
his castle of Stimigliano, near Orvieto; and suspicion fell upon his
widow, more especially as, immediately after the event, she caused the
murderer to be cut down by two servants in her own chamber; but not
before he had declared that she had induced him to assassinate his
master by a promise of her love. Things became so hot for Medea da
Carpi that she fled to Urbania and threw herself at the feet of Duke
Guidalfonso II., declaring that she had caused the groom to be killed
merely to avenge her good fame, which he had slandered, and that she
was absolutely guiltless of the death of her husband. The marvelous
beauty of the widowed Duchess of Stimigliano, who was only nineteen,
entirely turned the head of the Duke of Urbania. He affected implicit
belief in her innocence, refused to give her up to the Orsinis, kinsmen
of her late husband, and assigned to her magnificent apartments in the
left wing of the palace, among which the room containing the famous
fireplace ornamented with marble Cupids on a blue ground. Guidalfonso
fell madly in love with his beautiful guest. Hitherto timid and
domestic in character, he began publicly to neglect his wife, Maddalena
Varano of Camerino, with whom, although childless, he had hitherto
lived on excellent terms; he not only treated with contempt the
admonitions of his advisers and of his suzerain the Pope, but went so
far as to take measures to repudiate his wife, on the score of quite
imaginary ill-conduct. The Duchess Maddalena, unable to bear this
treatment, fled to the convent of the barefooted sisters at Pesaro,
where she pined away, while Medea da Carpi reigned in her place at
Urbania, embroiling Duke Guidalfonso in quarrels both with the powerful
Orsinis, who continued to accuse her of Stimigliano's murder, and with
the Varanos, kinsmen of the injured Duchess Maddalena; until at length,