d in 1587;
and on his coronation day rode through the streets throwing gold to
the people, after the manner of the Mantuan Dukes. He kept up an army
of six thousand men, among a population of eighty thousand all told;
and maintained as his guard "fifty archers on horseback, who also
served with the arquebuse, and fifty light-horsemen for the guard of
his own person, who were all excellently mounted, the Duke possessing
such a noble stud of horses that he always had five hundred at
his service, and kept in stable one hundred and fifty of marvelous
beauty." He lent the Spanish king two hundred thousand pounds out
of his father's sparings; and when the Archduchess of Austria,
Margherita, passed through Mantua on her way to wed Philip II. of
Spain, he gave her a diamond ring worth twelve thousand crowns. Next
after women, he was madly fond of the theatre, and spent immense sums
for actors. He would not, indeed, cede in splendor to the greatest
monarchs, and in his reign of fifteen years he squandered fifty
million crowns! No one will be surprised to learn from a contemporary
writer in Mantua, that this excellent prince was adorned with all
the Christian virtues; nor to be told by a later historian, that in
Vincenzo's time Mantua was the most corrupt city in Europe. A satire
of the year 1601, which this writer (Maffei) reduces to prose, says
of that period: "Everywhere in Mantua are seen feasts, jousts, masks,
banquets, plays, music, balls, delights, dancing. To these, the
young girls," an enormity in Italy, "as well as the matrons, go in
magnificent dresses; and even the churches are scenes of love-making.
Good mothers, instead of teaching their daughters the use of the
needle, teach them the arts of rouging, dressing, singing, and
dancing. Naples and Milan scarcely produce silk enough, or India and
Peru gold and gems enough, to deck out female impudence and pride.
Courtiers and warriors perfume themselves as delicately as ladies;
and even the food is scented, that the mouth may exhale fragrance.
The galleries and halls of the houses are painted full of the loves
of Mars and Venus, Leda and the Swan, Jove and Danae, while the
devout solace themselves with such sacred subjects as Susannah and the
Elders. The flower of chastity seems withered in Mantua. No longer in
Lydia nor in Cyprus, but in Mantua, is fixed the realm of pleasure."
The Mantuans were a different people in the old republican times, when
a fine was imposed for