Maria Paleologa, daughter of the Marquis of Monferrato, and when the Marquis died in the following year and was succeeded by his son, a delicate boy of five, it seemed possible that Federigo through his wife might claim the lordship. All this was doubtless noted by the ambitious lady at the Reggia. In 1524 it was time for Federigo to bring home his bride to Mantua, but to the astonishment of all, and especially of his mother, this is just what he declined to do. For meantime he had fallen in love with Isabella Boschetti, and had made her his mistress, a son being born to him in 1520. In 1528 a conspiracy was discovered to poison Isabella, and it was found that her husband, Francesco Gonzaga, was concerned in it. He fled to Mantua, where Federigo had him murdered. But the Marquis suspected others beside the wronged husband, and especially he suspected his mother-in-law, Anne d'Alençon. Therefore he persuaded the Pope to annul his marriage with Maria, and succeeded in winning his reluctant consent. For this cause, then, Isabella d'Este hated Isabella Boschetti, and would sit lonely in the Reggia, while Federigo rode with his mistress gaily through the city on a gala day surrounded by courtiers and ladies. Everywhere in the rooms of Isabella at the Reggia we see a strange device displayed, a many-branched candlestick; and this has puzzled so many that I may perhaps note here that Mrs. Ady, who has given such loving care and study to all that concerns Isabella d' Este, tells us that it was in her misery at this time, face to face with the other Isabella, that she adopted it. Paolo Giovio explains why. "The device," he writes, "Madama caused to be painted in her rooms of the Corte Vecchia and on her villa of Porto, and I who was always her loyal servant gave her the motto, Sufficit unum in tenebris, which recalls Virgil's line, Unum pro multis." How dreary is the Palazzo del Tè now, and how forlorn, the most forlorn thing in forlorn Mantua, a palace of faëry that arose out of the mists of the lagoons and might seem already to be dissolving into mere damp and desolation. Yet once it seemed to be the wonder of the world, and that to Vasari, too, who had seen so much of what was best worth seeing everywhere in Italy. He writes a page full of curious enthusiasm on what he considers Giulio Romano's painting in the Sala dei Giganti in the Palazzo del Tè. But the room which was decorated by Rinaldo Mantovano is rather fantastic than beautiful. No. Mantua once the glorious is now the forlorn. Robbed as she has been of her pictures, there remain little more than these two palaces, or the two churches that Alberti designed, with the fading frescoes of Mantegna and Giulio Romano to see. Only the memories of two women beautiful and rare, of the same name, haunt us still in her fantastic silences, her burning sunshine and the awful damp of her autumn nights. Over her gates seem to be engraven the words, "Ave atque Vale," and over her tomb those which repeated the indecision of a woman's soul, over and over again to itself, "Forse che Si, Forse che No." THE CHAPTER XIV CREMONA HE way from Mantua, forlorn upon her lakes, to the beautiful and harmonious city of Cremona, takes you first through Curtatone, on the Lago Superiore, out of the Porta Belfiore, where, on May 29, 1848, a very bloody action was fought between the Austrians and the Tuscan allies of Carlo Alberto of Piedmont. A great monument rising out of the marshy Seregna commemorates the noble deed. Nor is this the only sanctuary upon this road, for, not much farther on, about three and a half miles from Mantua stands one of the most astonishing pilgrimage churches in all Italy. S. Maria delle Grazie was first built in 1399 by Francesco Gonzaga, who wished to render thanks to the Madonna for having freed the city of Mantua from the plague. He therefore decided to build this new church, which was completed and consecrated in 1406 upon this site, anciently sacred to the Blessed Virgin. In 1419 the place was enlarged and became one of the most important religious houses in Lombardy. The whole place is a shrine of the Madonna, full of every sort of votive offering, from cannon - balls that fell harmless into Mantua in the famous siege of 1522, and which Federigo placed here, to piles of crutches, shoes, wax arms and legs, silver hearts and the usual litter of a shrine. More amazing is it that not so much the worshipped as the worshipper is represented here in effigy. For, on coming into the church, you find yourself in an avenue of figures, life-size, and dressed in every sort of costume, in niches along the walls. These are they whom the Madonna has heard and answered here in her Church of the Graces. Among these favoured petitioners we find figures of Pope Pius II., the Emperor Charles v. and the pillager of Rome, the Constable Bourbon, whom Cellini swears he shot. Beneath each figure the story of his petition is told in rude verse, evidently of local manufacture. Here, amid all this amazement, lie the princes of the House of Gonzaga: and among them the pattern of courtiers, Baldassare Castiglione, the author of Il Cortegiano, which in those happier days was as eagerly read in the best and most cultured society throughout Europe as the French novel is on the Continent, or the Daily Mail newspaper in England to-day. For the tomb of this man, who was literally the first gentleman in Europe, Bembo composed this epitaph, for the body of Castiglione had been brought at his own desire all the way from Toledo, where he died, in order that it might be laid here in the tomb of his young wife. Non ego nunc vivo, conjux dulcissima: vitam Hippolytae Taurellae, quae in ambiguo reliquit, utrum pulchrior an castior fuerit. Primos juventae annos vix. Baldassar Castillion insatiabiliter morens posuit ann Dom. MDXX. S. Maria delle Grazie is a little off our true road, which lies along the great highway to the south of it. Pushing on our way we come first to Castellucchio, some three miles from S. Maria delle Grazie, and there is the old castle of Marcaria, where we cross the Oglio, and come presently to the old republic of Bozzolo. And hence certainly, if not from Mantua, I advise the train. These Lombardy roads, good for a mile or two, are far too monotonous for the joy of walking if they are merely of the plain. There is, too, next to nothing to be seen on the road between Mantua and Cremona that cannot be easily seen from these cities, where it is a pleasure to linger and draw out the days. Whereas, on the road in Lombardy if it rains you are involved in a sea of mud indescribable, and if the weather be dry for long you are overwhelmed and utterly brought to nothing by the desert of dust which the plain then becomes. The best season for the walker and automobilist is an early but not a rainy spring, or a late but not a wet autumn. Even then there are risks to be run, but the country is worth them, for if you be lucky the plain is only a vast garden full of delight, inexhaustible and lovely, and especially commendable to the automobilist. I can never make up my mind which is the most beautiful city in Lombardy, whether it be Bergamo, Mantua or Cremona, but I know that I love Cremona best. Picture to yourself a city like a pale rose growing in the midst of the great green plain, that, when the mulberry flowers, is all a sea of white blossom. You enter this city and find it silent but not forlorn, smiling though the grass grows in its beautiful great Piazza and the wide streets which the sun fills with gold; the great palaces are often deserted, the tall and beautiful towers that here and there rise to watch the plain are crumbling and make no sign, for Cremona is very old, the oldest Roman town in all the plain, and, in truth, here in Cisalpine Gaul she seems in her nobility like a stranger, some old centurion still on guard amid the dykes and the endless ways, in the service of the Senate and the Roman people. Cremona, as we have seen,1 was the first colony the Romans established north of the Po. It was a fortress established at the end of the Gallic war in 225 B.C., only seven years before Hannibal crossed the Alps and by his astonishing act revived the Nationalist hopes, 1 See supra. |