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Updated: June 26, 2025
The answer of this prince, who was now rich, but had always been penurious, and who never laid out a farthing, if he could help it, except in defence of his capital, was an appointment of Ariosto to the government of a district in a state of anarchy, called Garfagnana, which had nominally returned to his rule in consequence of the death of Leo, who had wrested it from him.
Folly planned it, Pride held to it, and the devils lent their climate. Garfagnana! Garfagnana! to have such a pleasant name, and to be what you are! Not that there were not old towers on the steep woods of the Apennine, nor glimpses of the higher peaks; towns also: one castle surrounded by a fringe of humble roofs there were all these things. But it was an oven.
For if some such primeval and predestinarian quality were not inherent in the City, how, think you, would the valley of the Serchio the hot, droughty, and baking Garfagnana lead down pointing straight to Rome; and how would that same line, prolonged across the plain, find fitting it exactly beyond that plain this vale of the Elsa, itself leading up directly towards Rome?
The Garfagnana, again, cannot be bettered if you avoid such touristry as Bagni di Lucca; but then Castelnuovo is bare, and though Barga is fine enough, Piazza al Serchio is a mere huddle of houses, and it is not till you reach Fivizzano on the other side of the pass that you find what you want. In Casentino alone there is everything mountains, rivers, woods, and footways, convents and castles.
To Giuseppe Porta of Castelnuovo della Garfagnana, a disciple of Salviati, were given two of the largest scenes in the Hall; to Girolamo Siciolante of Sermoneta, one of the large scenes and one of the small; to Orazio Sammacchini of Bologna one of the small scenes, to Livio da Forlì a similar one, and to Giovan Battista Fiorini of Bologna yet another of the small scenes.
These knights and ladies, for ever tearing about from Scotland to India, never, in point of fact, get any further than the Apennine slopes where Boiardo was born, where Ariosto governed the Garfagnana. Into the vast mediæval forests of Germany and France, Boiardo and Ariosto's fancy never penetrated.
But to-day my way lies through the valley, Val di Nievole, towards Lucca, lost in the plain at the gate of the Garfagnana.
Well, the heat was increasing, but it seemed far more bearable than it had been in the earlier places; in the oven of the Garfagnana or in the deserts of Siena.
Then Count Nobili rose, and, in that sweet-toned voice which had fallen like a charm on many a woman's ear, addressed the marchesa. "Marchesa Guinigi, hereditary Governess of Lucca, and Countess of the Garfagnana, I am come to ask in marriage the hand of your niece, Enrica Guinigi. I desire no portion with her. The lady herself is a portion more than enough for me."
She felt this, and hated Nobili more keenly for having had the wit to wound her. "I bind myself, immediately on the signing of the contract, to discharge every mortgage, debt, and incumbrance on these feudal lands of Corellia in the Garfagnana; also any debts in and about the Guinigi Palace and lands, within and without the walls of Lucca.
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