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Updated: May 4, 2025
At about the same time that Burchard was making in his Diarium those entries which reflect so grossly upon the Pope and Lucrezia, Gianluca Pozzi, the ambassador of Ferrara at the Vatican, was writing the following letter to his master, Duke Ercole, Lucrezia's father-in-law elect: "This evening, after supper, I accompanied Messer Gerardo Saraceni to visit the Most Illustrious Madonna Lucrezia in your Excellency's name and that of the Most Illustrious Don Alfonso.
Lucrezia's depression was easily comprehensible. The change in her husband she accounted for; but now here was Gaspare looking dismal! "I must cheer them all up," she thought to herself. "This beautiful time mustn't end dismally." And then she thought of the inevitable departure. Was Maurice looking forward to it, desiring it? He had spoken that day as if he wished to be off.
Sometimes he warts to approach her, but she dare not let him, and this pains her very much." I was struck with a lively sense of Lucrezia's merits, and was just revealing to her the sentiments which she had re-awakened in my breast, when the marchioness appeared in the garden, followed by a page and a young lady.
"What love for traditional symbolism!" said Caesar. "Everybody is not so anti-traditional as you. I will go on with my explanation," added Kennedy. "Saint Catherine has Lucrezia's features. She is small and slender. She wears her hair down, a little cap with a pearl cross which hangs on her forehead, and a collar also of pearls. She has large eyes, a candid expression.
She had never before prayed at a shrine. It was curious to be kneeling under this savage wall of rock above which the evening star showed itself in the clear heaven of night. She looked at the star and at the Madonna, then at the little bunches of flowers, and at Lucrezia's candle. These gifts of the poor moved her heart. Poverty giving is beautiful.
The days and nights that followed, until Lucrezia's departure a fortnight later, were days and nights of gaiety and merry-making at the Vatican; in banquets, dancing, the performance of comedies, masques, etc., was the time made to pass as agreeably as might be for the guests from Ferrara, and in all Cesare was conspicuous, either for the grace and zest with which he nightly danced, or for the skill and daring which he displayed in the daily joustings and entertainments, and more particularly in the bull-fight that was included in them.
Now and then they could faintly hear the sound of his moving jaws, Lucrezia's laughter, or Gaspare's eager voice. These fragmentary noises scarcely disturbed the great silence that lay about them, the night hush of the mountains and the sea. Hermione sat down on the seat in the terrace wall looking over the ravine. It was a moonless night, but the sky was clear and spangled with stars.
As dawn was breaking, Lucrezia and Gaspare climbed slowly up the mountain-side towards the cottage. Lucrezia's eyes were red, for she had just bidden good-bye to Sebastiano, who was sailing that day for the Lipari Isles, and she did not know how soon he would be back. Sebastiano had not cried. He loved change, and was radiant at the prospect of his voyage. But Lucrezia's heart was torn.
When he was recovered and well, a better post was offered him, and things ran smoothly till, twenty-five years later, Lucrezia died, leaving him broken-hearted with only one worthless son to embitter the last fourteen years of his widowed life. His most poignantly impressive motets seem to have been written under the anguish of Lucrezia's death.
In the evening, at the hour fixed, Caesar appeared at Lucrezia's; but he found there his brother Francesco. The two young men had never been friends. Still, as their tastes were very different, hatred with Francesco was only the fear of the deer for the hunter; but with Caesar it was the desire for vengeance and that lust for blood which lurks perpetually in the heart of a tiger.
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