s people were it not that they despise him for
being the creature of his favourites. Thus, the gift of Boscofolto to
the Belverde has excited the bitterest discontent; for the Countess is
notorious for her cruel exactions, and it is certain that at her death
this rich fief will revert to the Church. And now," Gamba ended with a
smile, "I have made known to your excellency the chief characters in the
masque, as rumour depicts them to the vulgar. As to the court, like the
government, it is divided into two parties: the Duke's, headed by the
Belverde, and containing the staider and more conservative members of
the Church and nobility; and the Duchess's, composed of every fribble
and flatterer, every gamester and rake, every intriguing woman and
vulgar parvenu that can worm a way into her favour. In such an
atmosphere you may fancy how knowledge thrives. The Duke's library
consists of a few volumes of theological casuistry, and her Highness
never opens a book unless it be to scandalise her husband by reading
some prohibited pamphlet from France. The University, since the fall of
the Jesuits, has been in charge of the Barnabite order, and, for aught I
know, the Ptolemaic system is still taught there, together with the
dialectic of Aristotle. As to science, it is anathema; and the press
being subject to the restrictions of the Holy Office, and the University
closed to modern thought, but few scholars are to be found in the duchy,
save those who occupy themselves with belles-lettres, or, like the abate
Crescenti, are engaged in historical research. Pianura, even in the late
Duke's day, had its circle of lettered noblemen who patronised the arts
and founded the local Arcadia; but such pursuits are out of fashion, the
Arcadia languishes, and the Bishop of Pianura is the only dignitary that
still plays the Mecaenas. His lordship, whose theological laxity and
coolness toward the Holy Office have put him out of favour with the
Duke, has, I am told, a fine cabinet of paintings (some of them, it is
rumoured, the very pictures that his Highness ordered to be burnt) and
the episcopal palace swarms with rhyming abatini, fashionable
playwrights and musicians, and the travelling archeologists who hawk
their antiques about from one court to another. Here you may assist at
interminable disputes as to the relative merits of Tasso and Ariosto, or
listen to a learned dissertation on the verse engraved on a carnelian
stone; but as to the question