ta 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 bloom of
boyhood. Nothing is left but solitude. To the mortmain of the Church
reverts Urbino's lordship, and even now he meditates the terms of
devolution. Jesuits cluster in the rooms behind, with comfort for the
ducal soul and calculations for the interests of Holy See.

A farewell to these memories of Urbino's dukedom should be ta