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He was born at Reggio, of which place his father was governor. As the means of improving his resources, he early attached himself to the service of Cardinal D'Este, and afterwards to that of the Duke of Ferrara. At the age of thirty years he commenced his "Orlando Furioso," and continued the composition for eleven years.

"Have you attended him?" "Yes," was the reply. "His Eastern servant 'phoned for me one night last week; and I found Ferrara lying unconscious in a room like a pasha's harem. He looked simply ghastly, but the man would give me no account of what had caused the attack. It looked to me like sheer nervous exhaustion. He gave me quite an anxious five minutes.

He had made considerable advance in his art; the renowned Luini, a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci, used to come to him at Ferrara, and while aiding him with his own counsels, pass on also the precepts of his great master. The portrait was almost completely finished; all that was left was to add a few strokes to the face, and Fabio might well be proud of his creation.

Regarding your Majesty's wish that a cardinal accompany the Duchess, his Holiness said that it did not seem proper to him for a cardinal to leave Rome with her; but that he had written the Cardinal of Salerno, the Legate in the Marches, to go to the seat of the Duke in Romagna and wait there, and accompany the Duchess to Ferrara to read mass at the wedding.

We started early in the morning, travelled through Ferrara and Bologna, and reached Cesena, where we put up at the posting-house. We got up early the next day and walked quietly to the house of George Franzia, a wealthy peasant, who was owner of the treasure. It was only a quarter of a mile from the city, and the good man was agreeably surprised by our arrival.

By a strange fate, the fragments of this precious clavichord, which was so highly esteemed in its day, have of late years found their way to the ancient palace of the dukes of Ferrara in Venice.

Among these, Lodovico had a devoted partisan in Beatrice d'Este, the sister of Duke Ercole of Ferrara, who had lately been left a widow for the second time by the death of her husband, the brave soldier Tristan Sforza, and who kept up a secret correspondence with the exiled princes.

After the death of his father, the able and learned Niccolo III., who first established his throne on sure and safe foundations, Ercole's two elder half-brothers, Leonello and Borso, reigned in succession over Ferrara, and kept up the proud traditions of the house of Este, both in war and peace. Both were bastards, but in the Este family this was never held to be a bar to the succession.

Yet as he looked with keener appraisal, he saw that Dolly Ferrara too had changed. Her dusky cloud of hair was as of old; her wide, dark eyes still mirrored faithfully every shift of feeling, and her incomparable creamy skin was more beautiful than ever. Moving, she had lost none of her lithe grace.

She travelled with much pomp and ceremony, as was befitting one of her position in the world, and on her arrival in Ferrara she was welcomed with most elaborate ceremonies.