the father of Torquato Tasso), were frequent visitors at
this

"Superbo scoglio, altaro e bel ricetto,
Di tanti chiari eroi, d' imperadori,
Orde raggi di gloria escono fuori,
Ch' ogni altro lume fan scuro e negletto."

Strange to relate, her husband, the Marquis of Pescara, was destined to
forestall his learned lady in the matter of poetry, for during his
imprisonment at Milan in the year 1512, he composed a "Dialogo d'Amore" to
send to his sorrowing wife at Ischia, a production which the learned Paolo
Giovio, the historian and bishop of Nocera, pronounced as being "summae
jucunditatis," though in reality it seems to have been feeble enough. But
however halting and commonplace the warrior's verses, Pescara's
composition had the immediate effect of opening the flood-gates of his
wife's poetic temperament, for she replied at once to her spouse's effort
with an epistle conceived in the _terza rima_ employed by Dante, and
though the poem is turgid in diction and shallow in thought, full of
classical names and allusions, "a parade of all the treasures of the
school-room," it exhibits the graceful ease and high scholarship which
mark all Vittoria's writings. Meanwhile, unblest with offspring of her own
and ever separated by the cruel circumstance of war from the husband she
seemed perfectly content to admire from a distance, Vittoria did not
expend all her time at Ischia in sacrificing to Apollo and the Muses, for
she now undertook the education of her husband's young cousin and heir,
Alphonso d'Avalos, Marchese del Vasto, whose manhood certainly did credit
to his instructress, for del Vasto under her influence grew up to be a
brave soldier and a tolerable scholar.

After sixteen years of married life with a husband who, although
professing deep devotion to his brilliant and virtuous consort, was almost
invariably absent from her side, Vittoria found herself left a widow
shortly after the great battle of Pavia in 1525 wherein Francis I. of
France surrendered to the Emperor Charles V. The Marquis of Pescara, after
the usual career of bloodthirsty adventures which passed in those days for
a life of knight-errantry, died at Milan towards the close of this year,
leaving behind him an unenviable reputation for treachery towards his
master. But however hard were the things said of the deceased Fernando
d'Avalos by the outside world, no breath of suspicion seems ever to have
penetrated to the heart of the faithful if plac