Gonzaga

“ I cried, appealing to Gonzaga, “the true events of that night are set forth in a memorial of which two copies were drawn up, one for the Pope and the other for your excellency, as the Emperor's vicegerent. Shall I recite its contents—that Messer Cosimo may be examined upon them.
“It is not necessary,” came Gonzaga's icy voice. “The memorial is here before me.” And he tapped a document upon the table. Then he fixed his prominent eyes upon Cosimo. “You are aware of its contents?” he asked.
Cosimo bowed, and Galeotto moved at last, for the first time since the trial's inception. ”

“ And bring him to our presence. [Exit Gonzaga.
Ast. I must blast
His entertainment. [Aside.] May it please your excellency.
He is a man debauch'd, and, for his riots,
Cast off by the king my master; and that, I hope, is
A crime sufficient.
Fer. To you, his subjects,
That like as your king likes.
Aurel. But not to us;
We must weigh with our own scale.
Re-enter Gonzaga, with Bertoldo richly habited, and Adorni.
This is he, sure.
How soon mine eye had found him! what a port
He bears! how well his bravery becomes him! ”

“ The kitchen was to him as the shrine of some minor cult, and if his breviary and beads commanded from him the half of the ecstatic fervour of his devotions to pot and pan, to cauldron and to spit, then was canonisation indeed assured him.
He set before them that day a dinner than which a better no prince commanded, unless it were the Pope. There were ortolans, shot in the valley, done with truffles, that made the epicurean Gonzaga roll his eyes, translated through the medium of his palate into a very paradise of sensual delight. ”

“ It is a fact of some political importance that in such moments of transition the unhappy city, like Naples at the flight of the Aragonese, was apt to fall a prey to gangs of (often highly aristocratic) scoundrels.
The house of Gonzaga at Mantua and that of Montefeltro of Urbino were among the best ordered and richest in men of ability during the second half of the fifteenth century. The Gonzaga were a tolerably harmonious family; for a long period no murder had been known among them, and their dead could be shown to the world without fear. ”

“ What man can do, I shall do; but...” He shrugged, and shook his head sorrowfully.
“Can you count on none?” asked Gonzaga, very serious, stroking his smooth, fat chin.
“I can count upon one,” answered Galeotto. “The Lord of Pagliano; he is ghibelline to the very marrow, and he belongs to me. At my bidding there is nothing he will not do. There is an old debt between us, and he is a noble soul who will not leave his debts unpaid. Upon him I can count; and he is rich and powerful. ”

“ But the ideal center of intellectual culture was the court of Urbino, the central figure of which was the learned and accomplished Elizabetta Gonzaga. This picturesque city of the eastern slope of the Apennines was then to Italy what Athens had been to Greece in the days of Pericles; and Elizabetta was to its court what Aspasia was in her own matchless salon—the magnet which attracted all the artists and men of letters of the age. ”

“ Gonzaga.—Are you all invited to the Doge’s to-morrow?
Contarino.—All of us, without exception.
Gonzaga.—That is well. It seems that my recommendations have obtained some weight with him, since his triumvirate has been removed. And in the evening a masked ball is to be given. Did not the Doge’s chamberlain say so?
Falieri.—He did.
Memmo.—I only hope there is no trick in all this. If he should have been given a hint of our conspiracy! Mercy on us! my teeth chatter at the thought. ”

“ In the palace of the Cardinal Gonzaga there are rooms and beds always ready for his use, and men reserved for his especial service. Yet he runs away and mistrusts even that friendly lord. In short, it is a sad misfortune that the present age should be deprived of the greatest genius which has appeared for centuries. What wise man ever spoke in prose or verse better than this madman? [57] In the following August, Scipione Gonzaga's servants, unable to endure Tasso's eccentricities, turned him from their master's house, and he took refuge in a monastery of the Olivetan monks. ”

“ Vincenzo Gonzaga, succeeding to his father's dukedom of Mantua, had scanty leisure to bestow upon the poet. Tasso felt neglected. In the autumn of 1587 we find him journeying through Bologna and Loreto to Rome, and taking up his quarters there with an old friend, Scipione Gonzaga, now patriarch of Jerusalem. Next year he wandered off to Naples, where he wrote a dull poem on Monte Oliveto. In 1589 he returned to Rome, and took up his quarters again with the patriarch of Jerusalem. The servants found him insufferable, and turned him out of doors. He fell ill, and went to a hospital. ”

“ Gonzaga sat on, entirely unmoved, and waited, indifferent to the stir there was amid the Ten. For by the ancient laws of chivalry—however much they might be falling now into desuetude—if Cosimo took up the glove, the matter passed beyond the jurisdiction of the Court, and all men must abide by the issue of the trial by battle. ”

“ Prince Gonzaga looked a little startled.
“The Fairfax I knew was just like that,” he said. “She was a New York girl, beautiful but poor, and of obscure origin.”
“This girl is from New York, too, but she is a great heiress, and has had many admirers. Lord Leigh and Augustus Frayne both wanted to marry her,” said the Italian beauty.
“Heiresses are always sought after,” commented the prince, and he added, with a touch of bitterness: “There is not much genuine love in the world, Miss Consani. Every one wants to marry money.” ”

“ The tales of crime and sensuality which fill the annals of the sixteenth century are so repulsive that it is with a feeling of relief that we turn our attention to other pictures of the same time which are altogether pleasing in their outlines. The court of the Duke of Urbino is the most conspicuous example of this better side of life, and his talented and accomplished wife, Elizabetta Gonzaga, a daughter of the reigning house of Mantua, presided over a literary salon which was thronged with all the wit and wisdom of the land. ”

“ Later, this penalty was commuted into one of ten years of exile to Mozambique, with a death sentence if he should return to America. After having spent three years in prison, Gonzaga sailed in May 1792 for Mozambique and shortly after his arrival a violent fever almost ended his life. ”

“ Private wrongs increased their number. Gonzaga, who represented the forward policy in Italy, was anxious to take advantage of the troubles at Genoa and Siena to establish direct Spanish rule over those cities, and the discontent at Piacenza was much to his mind. Aware of the hostile movements directed against him, and of the support given by Gonzaga from Milan to his assailants, Pierluigi prepared to defend himself by the building of a fortress at Piacenza. ”

“ The Palace was begun under the dynasty which preceded the Gonzagas, it saw all the glories of the Renaissance, saw Mantua sacked by the Germans, and the Gonzaga dynasty extinguished by the Austrians, and the city fallen to the French, and re-fallen to Austria, and caught up into the Cisalpine Republic, and then into the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, and then Austrian again till the yoke was broken by Victor Emmanuel and the stable dulness of to-day established. ”

“ The parody is evident when (cap. v. str. 28) the house of Gonzaga is deduced from the paladin Guidone, since the Colonna claimed Orlando, the Orsini Rinaldo, and the house of Este—according to Ariosto—Ruggiero as their ancestors. Perhaps Ferrante Gonzaga, the patron of the poet, was a party to this sarcasm on the house of Este.
That in the ‘Jerusalem Delivered’ of Torquato Tasso the delineation of character is one of the chief tasks of the poet, proves only how far his mode of thought differed from that prevalent half a century before. ”

“ As I had made their acquaintance on my first visit to Marseilles, I introduced Marcoline to them as my niece, who only spoke Italian. As the two young ladies spoke the tongue of Tasso also, Marcoline was highly delighted. The younger sister, who was by far the handsomer of the two, afterwards became the wife of Prince Gonzaga Solferino. The prince was a cultured man, and even a genius, but very poor. For all that he was a true son of Gonzaga, being a son of Leopold, who was also poor, and a girl of the Medini family, sister to the Medini who died in prison at London in the year 1787. ”

“ For nearly four hundred years the Gonzagas continued to rule the city, which the first prince of their line, having well-nigh destroyed, now rebuilt and restored to greater splendor than ever; and it is the Mantua of the Gonzagas which travellers of this day look upon when they visit the famous old city. Their pride and their wealth adorned it; their wisdom and prudence made it rich and prosperous; their valor glorified it ”

“ Gonzaga conducted us to the door of the closet. “I shall look to hear from you, Ser Galeotto,” he said. “And if at first the nobles of the Val di Taro are not to be moved, perhaps after they have had a taste of Messer Pier Luigi's ways they will gather courage out of despair. I think we may be hopeful if patient. ”

“ His son Giovan Francesco II. (d. 1444) succeeded him under the regency of his uncle Carlo Malatesta and the protection of the Venetians. He became a famous general, and was rewarded for his services to the emperor Sigismund with the title of marquess of Mantua for himself and his descendants (1432) , an investiture which legitimatized the usurpations of the house of Gonzaga. His son Luigi III. “il Turco” (d. 1478) likewise became a celebrated soldier, and was also a learned and liberal prince, a patron of literature and the arts. ”

“ But after a period of internal discord Ludovico Gonzaga attained to power (1328) , and was recognized as imperial vicar (1329) ; and from that time till the death of Ferdinando Carbo in 1708 the Gonzagas were masters of Mantua (see Gonzaga) . Under Gian Francesco II., the first marquis, Ludovico III., Gian Francesco III. (whose wife was Isabella d’Este) , and Federico II., the first duke of Mantua, the city rose rapidly into importance as a seat of industry and culture. It was stormed and sacked by the Austrians in 1630, and never quite recovered. ”

“ For that, in a sense, is what Gonzaga’s poems to Marilia suggest. No other book of love poems has so appealed to the Portuguese reader; the number of editions through which the Marilia de Dirceu has gone is second only to the printings of Os Lusiadas, and has, since the original issue in 1792, reached to thirty-four. Gonzaga’s Marilia (in real life D. Maria Joaquina Dorothea de Seixas Brandão) rises from the verses of these lyras into flesh and blood reality; the poet’s love, however much redolent of [64] Petrarchian conventions, is no imagined passion. ”

“ The superb head has, it must be confessed, more grandeur and energy than true individuality or life. The companion picture represents Eleonora Gonzaga seated near an open window, wearing a sombre but magnificent costume, and, completing it, one of those turbans with which the patrician ladies of North Italy, other than those of Venice, habitually crowned their locks. ”

“ After the fall of the Roman empire Ancona was successively attacked by the Goths, Lombards and Saracens, but recovered its strength and importance. It was one of the cities of the Pentapolis under the exarchate of Ravenna, the other four being Fano, Pesaro, Senigallia and Rimini, and eventually became a semi-independent republic under the protection of the popes, until Gonzaga took possession of it for Clement VII. in 1532. ”

“ That your words, in so far as the politics of Babbiano are concerned, may be true; our resistance of Gian Maria may indeed be losing him his throne and doing good service to the cause of the Count of Aquila; but how shall all this prove that lie of yours, that Messer Francesco—for it is clearly of him you speak—that Messer Francesco should be this agent of the Count's? It is a lie, Gonzaga, for which you shall be punished as you deserve. ”

“ Thus all the ministers, actuated at once by personal and political motives, favoured the plans of Fieschi. Gonzaga was welcomed with delight and obtained a solemn promise that the crown of France would renounce all pretensions to the government of Genoa. He was also empowered to make use of the French troops in Piedmont in garrison at Turin, Moncalieri, Savigliano and Pinerolo; and to select in the port of Toulon such ships as might be adapted to serve the purposes of Fieschi. ”

“ In order to enhance its value, Urban also told the ambassador that even a noble of the house of Gonzaga, a relative of Ferdinand's, had not only been placed in a litter and brought under escort to Rome by command of the Holy Office, but had been taken at once to the Castle and kept there for a long time, until the trial was ended. ”

“ The fields are uncultivated; except three poor women gathering a few grapes, we saw not the shadow of a human creature. There, they neither sow nor reap; the country sides are growing wild, and the uncultivated vines are returning to their primitive state.”
Charles III., the unfortunate, was ruling over these desolated provinces and his subjects suffered every species of indignity, outrage and despotism. To render matters, if possible, a little worse, Gonzaga urged the Emperor to reduce to a swamp all that wide plain between the Alps and the Po to form a barrier to French invasion of Lombardy. ”

“ A brave revenge; and my lord feels, too late,
[Pg 311] That innocence will find friends. The great Gonzaga,
The honour of his order, (I must praise
Virtue, though in an enemy,) he whose fights
And conquests hold one number, rallying up
Her scatter'd troops, before we could get time
To victual or to man the conquer'd city,
Sat down before it ”