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Many of the ruling dynasties of Italy bore this stain the Sforza, the Malatesta, the Bentivoglio, and the Aragonese of Naples; even the brilliant Borso, the first Duke of Ferrara, was the illegitimate brother of his successor, Ercole. Lucretia, however, was the daughter of a Pope, the child of a priest, and this, in the eyes of the Este, constituted her disgrace.
In front of it rose the monuments of the two great princes of the house of Este, Niccolò III and Borso. One is an equestrian statue, the other a sitting figure; both were placed upon columns, and therefore are small. The crumbling pillars by the entrance archway are still standing, but the statues were destroyed in 1796.
At Venice, in 1491, the princesses of the house of Este were met and welcomed by the Bucentaur, and entertained by boat-races and a splendid pantomime, called 'Meleager, in the court of the ducal palace. At Milan Leonardo da Vinci directed the festivals of the Duke and of some leading citizens.
Giulio escaped from their hands with the loss of one of his eyes, and sought justice from the Duke against the Cardinal in vain. Thereupon he vowed to be revenged on both Ippolito and Alfonso. His plot was to murder them, and to place Ferdinand of Este on the throne.
Et, apres en avoir rendu louange a Dieu, les mena en sa pauvre maisonnette, et leur monstra de quoy elle vivoit durant sa demeure; ce que leur eust este incroiable, sans la congnoissance qu'ilz avoient que Dieu est puissant de nourrir en un desert ses serviteurs, comme au plus grandz festins du monde.
But on either side, into the defiles of the Euganean hills to the north, into the widening torrent valleys of the Modenese Apennines to the south, the Marquisate of Este stretches up into feudalism, into chivalry, into the imaginative kingdom of the Middle Ages.
The many discomforts and the actual cold and hunger which the Este ladies endured during the five days which they spent on board these vessels are graphically described in a letter addressed to Isabella's husband by her Ferrarese lady-in-waiting, Beatrice de' Contrari, after the travellers had reached Pavia.
A wise woman, by which I do not mean in vulgar parlance one who pretends to prophecy, has a maxim to the same effect: Toma este aviso, she says, guardate de aquel que no tiene esperanza de bien! take care of him who hath no hope of good! Sir Thomas More. "Of whole heart cometh hope," says old Piers Plowman.
Rui Diaz concludes with the following paragraph, in which he affirms that he knew the woman Maldonada, which may be taken as proof that she was among the few that survived the first disastrous settlement and lived on to more fortunate times: his pious pun on her name would be lost in a translation: "De esta manera quedo libre la que ofrecieron a las fieras: la cual mujer yo la conoci, y la llamaban la Maldonada, que mas bien se le podia llamar la BIENDONADA; pues por este suceso se ha de ver no haber merecido el castigo a que la ofrecieron."
But a new calamity befell the house of Este that November in the death of Anna Sforza, who, like her sister-in-law, gave birth to a still-born child on the 30th of November, and herself expired a few hours later, to the grief of her whole family, and more especially of Duke Ercole, who, in his advancing years, saw himself bereaved of all of those he loved best.