one of prolonged terror. Immured in
strong places on high rocks, or confined to gloomy fortresses like the
Milanese Castello, he surrounded his person with foreign troops,
protected his bedchamber with a picked guard, and watched his meat and
drink lest they should be poisoned. His chief associates were artists,
men of letters, astrologers, buffoons, and exiles. He had no real
friends or equals, and against his own family he adopted an attitude of
fierce suspicion, justified by the frequent intrigues to which he was
exposed.[1] His timidity verged on monomania. Like Alfonso II. of
Naples, he was tortured with the ghosts of starved or strangled victims;
like Ezzelino, he felt the mysterious fascination of astrology; like
Filippo Maria Visconti, he trembled at the sound of thunder, and set one
band of body-guards to watch another next his person. He dared not hope
for a quiet end. No one believed in the natural death of a prince:
princes must be poisoned or poignarded.[2] Out of thirteen of the
Carrara family, in little more than a century (1318-1435), three were
deposed or murdered by near relatives, one was expelled by a rival from
his state, four were executed by the Venetians. Out of five of the La
Scala family, three were killed by their brothers, and a fourth was
poisoned in exile.

[1] See what Guicciardini in his _History of Florence_ says about
the suspicious temper of even such a tyrant as the cultivated and
philosophical Lorenzo de' Medici. See too the incomparably eloquent
and penetrating allegory of _Sospetto_, and its application to the
tyrants of Italy in Ariosto's _Cinque Canti_ (C. 2. St. 1-9).

[2] Our dramatist Webster, whose genius was fascinated by
the crimes of Italian despotism, makes the Duke of Bracciano exclaim
on his death-bed:--

'O thou soft natural Death, thou art joint-twin
To sweetest Slumber! no rough-bearded comet
Stares on thy mild departure; the dull owl
Beats not against thy casement; the hoarse wolf
Scents not thy carrion: pity winds thy corse,
Whilst horror waits on princes.'

Instances of domestic crime might be multiplied by the hundred.
Besides those which will follow in these pages, it is enough to
notice the murder of Giovanni Francesco Pico, by his nephew, at
Mirandola (1533); the murder of his uncle by Oliverotto da Fermo;
the assassination of Giovanni Varano by his brothers at Camerin