a high hand, and interfered with the personal and
domestic affairs of the inhabitants, so that he speedily roused their
resentment. Against the establishment of the Inquisition, which he set
about under the mask of zeal for religion, but in reality for the
intimidation of the nobles, the whole city rose up in violent
opposition. After having exhausted itself in a vain struggle with the
viceroy, it resolved to petition the emperor, and commissioned the
Prince of Salerno to plead its cause at the Court of Nuremberg. But in
consequence of being forestalled by the cunning Don Pedro, the prince,
when he arrived, found the case prejudged, and all his arguments and
pleadings were of no avail. Disgusted with the failure of his errand,
with the coldness of his reception, and with other indignities which
he received at the hands of the emperor and his viceroy, he determined
to abandon altogether the cause of Austria. Repairing to Venice, he
publicly gave effect to his decision; whereupon Don Pedro, too glad to
have an opportunity of oppressing his personal enemy, declared the
prince a rebel, confiscated his estates, and seized all his personal
property. In the misfortunes of his patron Bernardo Tasso shared. He
too was proscribed as a rebel; his property at Salerno was seized, and
his wife and children were transferred by the viceroy's orders to
Naples, where her family resided, and where, under their cruel
treatment, instigated by the viceroy, she was deprived of her fortune,
and virtually held a prisoner to the day of her death.

Such were the dark clouds that, after a brief gleam of the brightest
prosperity, hung over the early years of Torquato Tasso. Deprived of
the care of a father who followed from court to court the varied
fortunes of his benefactor, and in the company of a mother worse than
widowed, dependent upon the cold and niggardly charity of friends who
were either too timid or superstitious to oppose the patron of the
Inquisition, the child grew up in melancholy solitude, like an
etiolated plant that has been deprived of the sunshine. The original
sadness and sensitiveness of his disposition was much increased by the
family misfortunes. In his seventh year he was sent to a school in
the neighbourhood, opened by the Jesuits, who were at this time
beginning to exert a powerful influence upon society, principally on
account of their zeal in the cause of education. At this school he
remained for three years, acquiring