it his flesh, cut slices out, and sold and ate
it--distributing his living body as a sort of infernal sacrament
among themselves.

[3] See the article 'Perugia' in my _Sketches in Italy and Greece_.

To multiply the records of crime revenged by crime, of force repelled
by violence, of treason heaped on treachery, of insult repaid by fraud,
would be easy enough. Indeed, a huge book might be compiled containing
nothing but the episodes in this grim history of despotism, now tragic
and pathetic, now terror-moving in sublimity of passion, now despicable
by the baseness of the motives brought to light, at one time revolting
through excess of physical horrors, at another fascinating by the
spectacle of heroic courage, intelligence, and resolution. Enough
however, has been said to describe the atmosphere of danger in which the
tyrants breathed and moved, and from which not one of them was ever
capable of finding freedom. Even a princely house so well based in its
dynasty and so splendid in its parade of culture as that of the Estensi
offers a long list of terrific tragedies. One princess is executed for
adultery with her stepson (1425); a bastard's bastard tries to seize the
throne, and is put to death with all his kin (1493); a wife is poisoned
by her husband to prevent her poisoning him (1493); two brothers cabal
against the legitimate heads of the house, and are imprisoned for life
(1506). Such was the labyrinth of plot and counterplot, of force
repelled by violence, in which the princes praised by Ariosto and by
Tasso lived.

Isolated, crime-haunted, and remorseless, at the same time fierce and
timorous, the despot not unfrequently made of vice a fine art for his
amusement, and openly defied humanity. His pleasures tended to
extravagance. Inordinate lust and refined cruelty sated his irritable
and jaded appetites. He destroyed pity in his soul, and fed his dogs
with living men, or spent his brains upon the invention of new tortures.
From the game of politics again he won a feverish pleasure, playing for
states and cities as a man plays chess, and endeavoring to extract the
utmost excitement from the varying turns of skill and chance. It would
be an exaggeration to assert that all the princes of Italy were of this
sort. The saner, better, and nobler among them--men of the stamp of Gian
Galeazzo Visconti, Can Grande della Scala, Francesco and Lodovico
Sforza, found a more humane enjoyment in the consolidation o