st
conscience might well take alarm from the spectacle of fate so
grotesque and ludicrous; for, wittingly or unwittingly, the artist
here punishes, as Dante knew best how to do, the folly of sinners as
well as their wickedness. Boiling is bad enough; but to be boiled in
an undeniable dinner-pot, like a leg of mutton, is to suffer shame us
well as agony.

We turned from these horrors, and walked down by the side of the Duomo
toward the Ghetto, which is not so foul as one could wish a Ghetto
to be. The Jews were admitted to Ferrara in 1275, and, throughout the
government of the Dukes, were free to live where they chose in
the city; but the Pope's Legate assigned them afterward a separate
quarter, which was closed with gates. Large numbers of Spanish Jews
fled hither during the persecutions, and there are four synagogues
for the four languages,--Spanish, German, French, and Italian. Avventi
mentions, among other interesting facts concerning the Ferrarese Jews,
that one of their Rabbins, Isaaco degli Abranelli, a man of excellent
learning in the Scriptures, claimed to be descended from David. His
children still abide in Ferrara; and it may have been one of his
kingly line that kept the tempting antiquarian's shop on the corner
from which you turn up toward the Library. I should think such a man
would find a sort of melancholy solace in such a place: filled with
broken and fragmentary glories of every kind, it would serve him for
that chamber of desolation, set apart in the houses of the Oriental
Hebrews as a place to bewail themselves in; and, indeed, this idea may
go far to explain the universal Israelitish fondness for dealing in
relics and ruins.

V.

The Ghetto was in itself indifferent to us; it was merely our way to
the Library, whither the great memory of Ariosto invited us to see his
famous relics treasured there.

We found that the dead _literati_ of Ferrara had the place wholly to
themselves; not a living soul disputed the solitude of the halls with
the custodians, and the bust of Ariosto looked down from his monument
upon rows of empty tables, idle chairs, and dusty inkstands.

The poet, who was painted by Titian, has a tomb of abandoned ugliness,
and sleeps under three epitaphs; while cherubs frescoed on the
wall behind affect to disclose the mausoleum, by lifting a frescoed
curtain, but deceive no one who cares to consider how impossible it
would be for them to perform this service, and caper so ignobl