puppets of the musing mind. Once
more imagination plants trim orange-trees in giant jars of Gubbio ware
upon the pavement where the garden of the Duchess lay--the pavement
paced in these bad days by convicts in grey canvas jackets--that
pavement where Monsignor Bombo courted 'dear dead women' with
Platonic phrase, smothering the Menta of his natural man in lettuce
culled from Academe and thyme of Mount Hymettus. In yonder loggia,
lifted above the garden and the court, two lovers are in earnest
converse. They lean beneath the coffered arch, against the marble of
the balustrade, he fingering his dagger under the dark velvet doublet,
she playing with a clove carnation, deep as her own shame. The man is
Giannandrea, broad-shouldered bravo of Verona, Duke Guidobaldo's
favourite and carpet-count. The lady is Madonna Maria, daughter of
Rome's Prefect, widow of Venanzio Varano, whom the Borgia strangled.
On their discourse a tale will hang of woman's frailty and man's
boldness--Camerino's Duchess yielding to a low-born suitor's stalwart
charms. And more will follow, when that lady's brother, furious
Francesco Maria della Rovere, shall stab the bravo in torch-litten
palace rooms with twenty poignard strokes 'twixt waist and throat, and
their Pandarus shall be sent down to his account by a varlet's
_coltellata_ through the midriff. Imagination shifts the scene, and
shows in that same loggia Rome's warlike Pope, attended by his
cardinals and all Urbino's chivalry. The snowy beard of Julius flows
down upon his breast, where jewels clasp the crimson mantle, as in
Raphael's picture. His eyes are bright with wine; for he has come to
gaze on sunset from the banquet-chamber, and to watch the line of
lamps which soon will leap along that palace cornice in his honour.
Behind him lies Bologna humbled. The Pope returns, a conqueror, to
Rome. Yet once again imagination is at work. A gaunt, bald man,
close-habited in Spanish black, his spare, fine features carved in
purest ivory, leans from that balcony. Gazing with hollow eyes, he
tracks the swallows in their flight, and notes that winter is at hand.
This is the last Duke of Urbino, Francesco Maria II., he whose young
wife deserted him, who made for himself alone a hermit-pedant's round
of petty cares and niggard avarice and mean-brained superstition. He
drew a second consort from the convent, and raised up seed unto his
line by forethought, but beheld his princeling fade untimely in the
blo