the Cardinal Hercules, who ruled Mantua with a firm and able hand,
increasing the income of the state, spending less upon the ducal stud,
and cutting down the number of mouths at the ducal table from eight
hundred to three hundred and fifty-one. His justice tended to severity
rather than mercy; but reformers of our own time will argue well of
his heart, that he founded in that time a place of refuge and
retirement for abandoned women. Good Catholics will also be pleased to
know that he was very efficient in suppressing the black heresy of
Calvin, which had crept into Mantua in his day,--probably from
Ferrara, where the black heretic himself was then, or about then, in
hiding under the protection of the ill-advised Marchioness Renee. The
good Cardinal received the Pope's applause for his energy in this
matter, and I doubt not his hand fell heavily on the Calvinists. Of
the Duke who died so young, the Venetian ambassador thought it worth
while to write what I think it worth while to quote, as illustrating
the desire of the Senate to have careful knowledge of its neighbors:
"He is a boy of melancholy complexion. His eyes are full of spirit,
but he does not delight in childish things, and seems secretly proud
of being lord. He has an excellent memory, and shows much inclination
for letters."

His brother Guglielmo, who succeeded him in 1550, seems to have
had the same affection for learning; but he was willful, harsh, and
cruelly ambitious, and cared, an old writer says, for nothing so
much as perpetuating the race of the Gonzagas in Mantua. He was a
hunchback, and some of his family (who could not have understood his
character) tried to persuade him not to assume the ducal dignity; but
his haughty temper soon righted him in their esteem, and it is said
that all the courtiers put on humps in honor of the Duke. He was not
a great warrior, and there are few picturesque incidents in his reign.
Indeed, nearly the last of these in Mantuan history was the coronation
at Mantua of the excellent poet Lodovico Ariosto, by Charles V., in
1532, Federico II. reigning. But the Mantuans of Guglielmo's day were
not without their sensations, for three Japanese ambassadors passed
through their city on the way to Rome. They were also awakened to
religious zeal by the reappearance of Protestantism among them. The
heresy was happily suppressed by the Inquisition, acting under Pius
V., though with small thanks to Duke William, who seems to have