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The feeling of the Ferrarese towards the ruling house was a strange compound of silent dread, of the truly Italian sense of well-calculated interest, and of the loyalty of the modern subject: personal admiration was transferred into a new sentiment of duty.
About four o'clock that afternoon, the Ferrarese ambassador, Antonio Costabili, received an unexpected summons to the Castello, and he was admitted into the duke's presence. We give the details of his interview with the grief-stricken prince, in his own words from a letter which he addressed the same evening to Beatrice's father, Duke Ercole
One of Alexander's greatest delights was to watch beautiful women dancing, and when Lucretia and the ladies of her court were so engaged he was careful to summon the Ferrarese ambassadors so that they might note his daughter's grace. One evening he remarked laughingly that "they might see that the duchess was not lame."
Here, in the Apennines, Scandiano is a fortified village, also a castle, doubtless half turned into a Renaissance villa, but mediæval and feudal nevertheless; but the name of Scandiano belongs also, I know not for what reason, to a certain little red-brick palace on the outskirts of Ferrara, beautifully painted with half-allegorical, half-realistic pageant frescoes by Cosimo Tura, and enclosing a sweet tangled orchard-garden; to all of which, being the place to which Duke Borso and Duke Ercole were wont to retire for amusement, the Ferrarese have given the further name of Schifanoia, which means, "fly from cares."
Indeed, such evidence as there is, when properly considered, points in the opposite direction, even if no account is taken of the fact that this was not the first occasion on which it was proposed that Cesare should abandon the ecclesiastical career, as is shown by the Ferrarese ambassador's dispatches of March 1493.
The bride, arrayed in a white robe sown with pearls and glittering with jewels, was led to the altar by the Duchess of Ferrara and Marchioness of Mantua, supported by the young Don Alfonso, his uncle Sigismondo, and a select retinue of Ferrarese courtiers and ladies.
Lucretia succeeded in securing the bishopric of Reggio for the latter and also a house in Rome for the Ferrarese envoy. Another important question was the dowry of jewels which Lucretia was to receive. During the Renaissance the passion for jewels amounted to a mania.
Moro!" as the young duchess rode by in all her bravery, escorted by her brother Alfonso and Madonna Anna, who had ridden out to meet her, with a gay company of Ferrarese lords and ladies.
In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the continuation of his Jerusalem, an Oration spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne.
Alexander himself, much as he was addicted to the pleasures of the senses, cared nothing for elaborate banquets. Concerning the Pope, the Ferrarese ambassador wrote to his master in 1495 as follows: He partakes of but a single dish, though this must be a rich one. It is, consequently, a bore to dine with him.
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