conduct, there is still preserved at
Ferrara one of Ariosto's inkstands, which is ornamented with a little
bronze Cupid, finger upon lip in token of silence.

Early biographers and literary historians were inclined to give to
Ginevra Lapi all credit for the more serious inspiration which prompted
him to write the major part of his amatory verse, and so careful had he
been to conceal the facts that it was not until many years after his
death that his marriage to Alessandra Strozzi was generally known.
Ariosto had been on a visit to Rome in the year 1515, and, on his
return, he chanced to stop at Florence, where he intended to spend three
or four days during the grand festival which was being held in honor of
Saint John the Baptist. Arriving just in time to be present at some
social function of importance, the poet there saw for the first time
this lady who was to mean so much to him for all the rest of his life.
It will be remembered that when Lorenzo de' Medici first met Lucrezia
Donati he had been taken to some evening company, much against his
will. In the present instance, it was the lady who showed
disinclination to go into society, and her recent widowhood gave her
good reason for her feeling in the matter; but, won over by the
entreaties of her friends, _da preghi vinta_, she finally consented to
go. What she wore and how she looked, and how she bore herself, and much
more, do we know from Ariosto's glowing lines which were written in
commemoration of this event. Her gown was of black, all embroidered with
bunches of grapes and grape leaves in purple and gold. Her luxuriant
blond hair, the _richissima capellatura bionda_, was gathered in a net
behind and, parted in the middle, fell to her shoulders in long curls on
either side of her face; and on her forehead, just where the hair was
parted, she wore a twig of laurel, cunningly wrought in gold and
precious stones.

Alessandra's most effective charm was her wonderful hair, of that color
which had been made famous by the pictures of Titian and Giorgione, and
it really seems that in Ariosto's time this color was so ardently
desired that hair dyes were in common use, especially in Venice. It is
with a feeling of some regret that we are led to reflect that much of
that gorgeous hair which we have admired for so many years in the famous
paintings of the Venetian masters may be artificial in its brilliant
coloring, but such, alas! is probably the case. The fair Alessand