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There is more sign in this of a woman stung by an unexpected neglect, than any religious exaltation at a soul saved. Stephen had not become a monk, and the misunderstanding swiftly passed over. But the letter is pleasant reading, because it was written at a time when Catherine's mysticism threatened to overshadow the purely human kindnesses of her earlier years. The idea of Christ as the heavenly Husband had developed from vague symbolism into a definite expression of spiritual familiarity. It was an unrealized element of good fortune that Stephen's whimsical frivolity kept alive in her a strain of normal sensations. She suffered whenever they were separated, and among the last letters she ever wrote, moreover, was one to Stephen with the pathetic, dependent cry, "When will you come, Stephen? Oh, come soon!"

Another secretary closely associated with Catherine's life for many years was Neri di Landoccio, a poet belonging to the group of dawning Renaissance writers. He suffered from melancholy, and having once met Catherine, naturally clung to the heartening radiance of her presence. From his letters, his youth appears to have been vicious. He was, at any rate, haunted by the notion that his misdemeanours were greater than God would be likely to forgive. He worried himself into a dangerous dismalness--a gloom perceiving no remedy. Then Catherine wrote him a long letter. She reiterated that God was far more ready to forgive than humanity to offend; that He was the Physician, and mankind His sick and ailing children. She told him that sadness constituted the worst fault of all in a disciple of Christ. To believe in the unplumbable love of God, and still persist in disheartenment, was a form of unrighteousness.

Neri did his best, but a gentle wistfulness penetrated his disposition, and not even Catherine could give him gaiety of thoughts. He and Stephen Marconi--the extreme opposites in temperament--became deeply attached to one another. They corresponded when apart, and Stephen, after Catherine's death, called Neri "among those whom the Lord has engrafted in the very innermost depths of my heart." A third man constantly in Catherine's society was her Confessor Raymond. Two small incidents told by himself, and against himself, suggest a perfectly honest and rather pleasant temperament, but a somewhat limited spiritual capacity. In the first, he confesses that when on their journeys great multitudes thronged to Catherine for confession and comfort, and that the fact of having to go for hours without food or rest greatly annoyed as well as wearied him.

From the other, both issue rather sweetly, but Catherine with almost a touch of greatness. Raymond, who again tells the story, says that she loved to talk to him upon spiritual matters, but that, not having the same mystical sensibility, these conversations frequently sent him to sleep. Catherine, absorbed in her subject, would continue for some time talking without perceiving that she lacked a listener, but when she did, she would merely wake the other, and good-humouredly tease him for allowing her to talk to the walls.

Catherine had by nature the sanest and tenderest common sense. It was she who wrote of prayer that everything done for the love of God or of our neighbours was a form of prayer, and those who were always doing good were always, as it were, at prayer. Love of one's fellow-creatures was practically one long-continued lifting of the heart to God.

When Catherine came to the political portion of her life, the point at which she may be said to have indirectly affected the Renaissance in Italy was reached. The popes were still at Avignon, while Rome clamoured for a return of the papacy to its original capital. Petrarch, in a letter, pictured Rome as a venerable matron standing desolate and in rags at the gate of the Vatican. "I asked at last," he wrote, "her name, and she murmured it forth. It reached me through the void, in the midst of sobs--it was Roma." Certainly, since the removal of the popes to France, Rome, as a city, had gone to pieces. The churches were in ruins, grass grew through the pavements up to the very steps of St. Peter's, peaceful sheep used its environments for pasturage. As the two great families of the town, the Colonna and Orsini fought unceasingly for supremacy, while the people were equally pestered, tortured, and destroyed by both. Save for those who fancied murder as a profession, life had grown a nightmare; decency and quiet were as things of which even the ashes had been scattered.

Catherine, like Petrarch, flung the weight of her eloquence on the side of the Romans, and Gregory's return to Italy is always attributed by Roman Catholics to her influence. But before this question had become poignant between them, Gregory had already tested Catherine's good sense in two political missions--one to Lucca, and one to Pisa. Both were successfully concluded, and in consequence, when Florence rose openly against the authority of the Pope, Catherine was chosen for a third time to conduct mediation. The employment of any woman as a diplomatic agent as early as 1370, was an extraordinary circumstance. During the Renaissance, frequent use was made of the intellectual adroitness of women. But, in Catherine's day, females, as Boccaccio states definitely, had few occupations besides house-bound duties and the excitements of intrigue.

Catherine created an admirable impression in Florence. On her arrival she was formally met by the principal men of the city. The Florentine Republic had itself invited her to come to their assistance. At the same time pure enthusiasm would have effected nothing. Consummate intelligence only could move the Florentines. Each Bull that came from the French Court, and from a pope with every personal interest in a foreign country, newly exasperated them. Catherine watched warily, judging character and manipulating it, until Guelfs and Ghibellines, acute in unfailing antagonisms, equally authorized her to commence peace negotiations at Avignon. Catherine immediately started for France. Stephen Marconi went with her, and the actual journey must have filled her with many unavoidable pleasures. To begin with, she loved the country. In addition, the gypsy travelling of the day entailed perpetual chance incidents and unexpected humanizing makeshifts. A week of gentle progress among Italian scenery would keep the joy of life stirring in most people, if only unawares.

At Avignon her story becomes, even more than before, the dramatic triumph of personality. When she came nobody wanted her. The cardinals had strong reasons for not wishing an ascetic's influence in the palace; Gregory, inert and ailing, flinched at the thought of a person noted for arousing qualities. She was received, notwithstanding, with ceremony. At her first audience, Gregory sat dressed in full canonicals, and surrounded by the entire conclave of cardinals, like a brilliant jewel in a purple case. Catherine behaved meekly, though in all likelihood her thoughts were less quiet than usual. For the papal residence was a gorgeous place; there were galleries, marble staircases, colonnades, magnificent gardens, elegant fountains. The ultimate possibility of luxury lay before Catherine's sober eyes, the very air itself being perfumed.

This was sufficient to have perturbed her, for a markedly unclerical influence emanated from so much comfort. But the women who filled the palace jarred still more emphatically. Their sumptuous persons were obviously at home--the very atmosphere indicated femininity. A large number were, in fact, mistresses of the cardinals; the rest, relatives and friends of the Pope, who had been granted apartments in the palace. Gregory's own morals have never been questioned. He sanctioned, by ignoring them, the scandals of his household, but his own life was that of an innocent and cultivated gentleman, with a liking for expensive living. Raynaldus, in his "Ecclesiasticus Annals," says that he was of an affectionate and domestic nature, loving his own people, and, in fact, too much led by them, especially in the matter of benefices. His private life was above reproach,--chaste, kindly, and generous. A scholarly man, he delighted in the society of other scholars. At Rome he instantly remitted all the duties on corn, hay, wine, etc., which the clergy had previously levied, and which fell most heavily on the poor people. But the troubles and anxieties that followed his return to Italy, added to an internal disease, from which he had for some time suffered, brought about his death at the age of sixty-seven.

This internal disease had something to do with the gentle inertia of Gregory's conduct. Once roused by Catherine to a certitude as to where his duty lay, he did it regardless of every personal inclination and affection.

But at the commencement of Catherine's visit, the question was solely how best to deal with the disaffected Florentines. The issue did not prove gratifying. The Government had promised Catherine to send ambassadors to Avignon, suing for peace. New dissensions leaping up between Guelfs and Ghibellines, none were sent, and negotiations collapsed. In the mean time the ladies at Avignon had grown interested in the attenuated sister, who passed them constantly on her way to and from an audience. They started primarily with the frank indifference of society women to another of a lower class. But indifference became painful interest when in a few days it was breathed tempestuously that this pale woman had come almost solely in order to persuade the Pope to return to the Vatican at Rome. Scared and disordered, the papal ladies ceased to look insolent; they set themselves instead to conciliate the "Mantellate" woman. Led by the Pope's sister, the Countess Valentinois, they made religion fashionable. Discarding all dancing, they instituted afternoon parties for pious conversation. The Countess Valentinois also visited Catherine in her own room, and after a few days, whenever Catherine went to the chapel to pray, she found all the court ladies following her example. Raymond, never very perspicacious, owns to being moved by "such unexpected signs of grace." He even admired the lovely gowns and misleading courteseys of the seemingly repentant ladies. Clearly a little susceptible, Catherine's churlish indifference greatly annoyed him. As her confessor, he had the opportunity of chiding her for this incivility--it was painful to see such pretty, graceful creatures repulsed so sternly. But Catherine upon this subject was adamant, and merely replying that had he the smallest inkling of the true dispositions of these mistresses of the cardinals, he would be nothing less than horrified.

Raymond, one imagines, still privately clung to a more pacific opinion; but if the story generally attributed to the Pope's niece is true, his eyes were soon opened to the real sanctity of these ladies. Catherine had fallen into one of the trances frequent with her when at prayer. Elys de Beaufort Turenne happened to be kneeling conveniently near, and the opportunity to expose a spurious absorption thrilled her with pernicious pleasure. The temptation was too exceptionable to resist, and bending over, she presently ran a big pin into the Mantellate's toe. The joke, as far as she was concerned, spurted into no more life than saturated fireworks. Catherine never stirred--unaware of the incident until afterwards. But Raymond realized for the future that some courtesies are means of concealment only.

The women of the Pope's household were not alone in disliking Catherine. The cardinals objected to her as strongly. She had come to labour against everything pleasing in their lives. Those won over, besides, praised immoderately, and the instinct to strike a balance is natural and intuitive.

Her spiritual pretensions had not even, as far as they were concerned, been proved to be genuine. They solicited from the Pope, therefore, an interview with the Mantellate nun, in which the soundness of her theology might be tested. This encounter lasted from noon until late in the evening, during the whole of which time they endeavoured to confuse her into foolishness. But Catherine had a very clear brain and a very quick one. She knew her subject, and, being a clever woman, in a few minutes also, roughly, the temperaments of the men she was dealing with. The thought is a purely personal one, but it is difficult not to believe that she enjoyed the excitement. Catherine was humble through instinct, but she must have realized that she was considerably more capable than most people. Stephen Marconi, present during the interview, says that two of them were enticed over almost immediately, and took sides with Catherine against their own party. The questions put, however, were anything but easy to deal with. Among other points they queried how she knew that she was not really in the subtle clutches of Satan; it was no uncommon trick for the Evil One to change himself into an angel of light, or sham to be a vision of Christ himself. All this time her extraordinary manner of life might be simply a cunning prelude to damnation.

Catherine neither wavered nor deliberated; her calm was gracious and simple; she was exquisitely willing to be interrogated. The cardinals gave in; the struggle over, they had even the grace to admit that "they had never met a soul at once so humble and so illuminated." Gregory, inherently a gentleman, afterwards apologized to Catherine for having permitted her to be molested by them, and from that time her troubles with the cardinals at any rate terminated.

Gregory himself had from the beginning been openly impressed by her. She left Avignon before the actual journey to Rome was made, but her passionately eager persuasions were the fire at which Gregory's conscience chiefly ignited. For his household became desperate and loquacious at the mere suggestion. Gregory also had been born in France; all his roots were in the genial soil of Avignon. But Catherine would not let the matter rest. In a yearning and courageous letter, beginning, "Holy Father, I, your miserable little daughter Catherine," she urged him to be overborne by nobody against doing his duty, for if God was with him, nobody could be against him.

Gregory went, and in a man old, fearsome, and extremely out of health, the action has an element of greatness. For the reputation of Rome, constantly reiterated by those about him, was very much like that of a den of wild beasts. Ser Amily, a provincial poet, who gives a rhymed description of the journey from Avignon, says, further, that all the physicians and astrologers prophesied a fatal termination to the expedition, but adds that they had apparently misread the constellations, as after some terrifying storms they sailed for the rest of the way upon a tranquil sea.

There were, in consequence, two popes--one at Rome, and the other in France. Both claimed supreme authority, and the confusion produced by them brought the papacy very near to the ridiculous. Then commenced, according to Muratori, a long series of terrible scandals in the Church. The result was unceasing private and public dissensions, incessantly culminating in murder. Urban excommunicated Clement and his cardinals. Clement, on his part, excommunicated Urban and his followers. The same benefices were conferred on different persons by the rival popes, each appointing his own bishop to every vacant see. Urban had been one of the cardinals during Catherine's momentous stay at Avignon, and knowing his character, she wrote him after his election some very wistful counsel. The necessity of behaving benevolently was like a cry wrung out of her involuntarily; again and again, in different phraseology, she begged him to "restrain a little those too quick movements with which nature inspires you."

This puts matters prettily--with an innate tact of feeling. Urban, in reality, was a man destitute of pleasant impulses. Fundamentally irritable, he possessed no control of utterance. Towards the cardinals his manners were inexcusable. He shouted the word "Fool!" at them upon the least hint of contradiction: over a difference of opinion he blurted furiously, "Hold your tongue; you don't know what you are talking about." Having determined to put down the rampant cupidity and immorality of these same cardinals, he raided their palaces as the quickest method of exposing them. On the other hand, he was a man of absolute probity, austerity, and courage. Petrarch had several times attacked the gluttony of high ecclesiastics. Urban ordered that one course only was ever to be seen upon the table of any prelate whatsoever, and adhered to the rule himself even upon occasions of hospitality. The following incident is a good example of his courage. As a result of the schism and his own extreme unpopularity, the people of Rome broke into open rebellion. The mob rushed to storm the Vatican. At the first rumour the household had fled to take refuge in other places. Only Urban refused to move, and remained alone in the great empty palace. When the mob stormed the doors and made for the Pope, they found him sitting motionless upon the throne, dressed in full pontifical splendour and holding the cross in solemn defiance in one upraised hand. The sight of his immovable figure, dramatic, repellent, denunciatory, broke the nerve of the impressionable Romans. They saw before them the representative of God, and with incoherent noises, fearful of eternal wrath, they fled, leaving the rigid figure impassive as an image, alone once more.

She could only have looked a rather wan and paltry object set against the lace and silk and breadth of the well-fed cardinals. She was by this time nothing but a narrow line of black draperies and a thin white face. But the moment she began to speak the old warmth leapt into her voice, and the nun became more deeply rich in colour than all the scarlet and purple she fronted. Catherine never lost her head or her courage. She was there to rouse the sluggish morals of the cardinals, but she was quite aware that Urban stood almost as much in need of improvement as they did. With admirable clarity she laid stress upon the fact that the only weapons suitable for a pope were patience and charity. Urban owned neither, but the pluck and eloquence of the woman reached some responsive feeling, and he praised her then and there in a generous abundance of phrases. Unfortunately he did nothing else, and the following Christmas Catherine sent him another cajoling reminder--the kind of reminder only a subtle woman, and one with charming ways in private life, would have thought of. She preserved some oranges, coated them with sugar, and having gilded them, sent them to the Pope. With the present came a note, explaining that in the preserving all the acidity of the orange had been drawn out, and that, like the orange, the fruit of the soul, when prepared and sweetened and gilded on the outside with the gold of tenderness, would overcome all the evil results of the late schism, or, as with a careful selection of an unhurtful word, she put it--"the late mischance."

Urban had previously empowered her to invite to Rome in his name whoever she considered would be useful to the divided Church in its hour of need. Among those Catherine wrote to William of England and Anthony of Nice, two friends, who lived in a pleasant convent at Lecceto, a few miles from Siena. A quaint correspondence resulted, for the two old men were sadly shaken in their comfortable habits by Catherine's letter. Yet the letter itself was a singularly good one. She states in it plainly that the Church was in such dire necessity that the time had come to give up all questions of peace and solitude in order to succour her.

There were few characters that Catherine could not understand; certainly she understood her two friars perfectly. For the peace and quiet of their country retreat, where they sat and talked in the shady woods, had made them absolutely flabby of spirit. The thought of change and bustle flustered them from head to foot. Catherine had to write again, and this time she wrote with some directness that this was a crisis when character became visibly tested, and when there was no mistaking who really were the true servants of God, and who were merely seekers of a way of life personally congenial to them. These latter, she said, seemed to think that God dwelt in one particular place, and could not be found in any other. This letter must have harried the two old gentlemen sadly. Friar Anthony came to Rome at last, and though it is not clear whether Friar William accompanied him or not, it is probable that, when one gave in, both did.

When Rome, at least, had grown comparatively reconciled to Urban, Catherine returned to Siena. She was thirty-three, and the radiance that had magnetized men into contemplating even death with tranquillity, if she was only with them, had to a great extent gone out of her. Nevertheless, her correspondence shows that she never lost her fine discernment of character. Some of her letters are still masterpieces of practical understanding.

For a short time still she lived quietly with the men and women who loved and made much of her, though had she for a second realized how subtly indulged she was, a panic of dismay would have shaken her strenuous spirit. Physical strength, however, was almost exhausted. She suffered greatly, and with a touching foolishness--touching because of its presence in so much wisdom--she repeated again and again that God permitted demons to distress her, and, in consequence, bent her failing strength to wrestle with their torments. That a natural disease was killing her did not seem credible to imagination. Nevertheless, except during intolerable pain, her expression continued pathetically joyous. When she was well enough they carried her out into a neighbouring garden, lent for her use. Catherine never, after the first excesses of her childhood, repudiated out-of-door pleasures. She died in 1380, surrounded by a very passion of regret and tenderness. On her death-bed she confessed quaintly that in the early days of her spiritual career she had yearned for solitude, but that God would have none of it. Each creature possessed a cell in their own souls, where the spirit could live as solitarily and as enclosed in the world as out of it.

Stephen Marconi was with her when she died, and just before the end she entreated him to enter the Order of the Carthusians. Neri she begged to become a hermit. The injunction for a moment appears to lack her usual intuition. Yet it was probably the result of a very deep understanding. Neri's nerves may have been more tranquil when not played upon by other people.

To the last she prayed, dying peacefully towards the "hour of Sext," one Sunday evening, according to Stephen, the body until her burial retained a wonderful beauty and fragrance.

Her last request to the latter was reverently complied with, and for the future he carried on, with the grace of nature that made him so lovable, the most endearing of his dead friend's labours--he became famous as a healer of feuds. The cult of Catherine's memory gave a sentimental happiness to his days. He remembered her with the painful delight of a faithful lover. Nothing in their companionship had been too trivial for a living recollection. Being elected Father Superior to his monastery, he "invariably added the delicacy of beans to the fare of his religious on Easter Day." He did this because one Easter Day he had dined with Catherine on beans, there having been nothing else in the house, and as Friar Bartholomew puts it, "the remembrance of that dinner stuck fast to the marrow of his spine." As an old man, Stephen still cherished the smallest details of her life, and on one occasion, at the sudden recall of some little incident illustrative of her loving-kindness, he burst abruptly into tears, seeming as if his heart would break. The brothers were obliged to lead him gently to a seat out-of-doors, where a freshening wind restored him.

An account of his death, written by a monk to a certain friend of the dead man, Ser Jacomo, and given in the English version in Miss Drane's life of Catherine, is sufficiently unusual to quote. It falls to the lot of few people to have their deaths recorded in quite such a superfluity of phrases.

"Dearest Father of Christ,

"My negligence--I need say no more--but yet with grief and sorrow I write to you, how our Father and our comfort, and our help, and our counsel, and our support, and our refreshment, and our guide, and our master, and our receiver, and our preparer, and our writer, and our visitor, and he who thought for us, and our delight, and our only good, and our entertainer; and his meekness, and his holy life, and his holy conversation, and his holy teachings, and his holy works, and his holy words, and his holy investigations. Alas, miserable ones, alas poor wretches, alas orphans, where shall we go, to whom shall we have recourse? Alas, well may we lament, since all our good is departed from us! I will say no more, for I am not worthy to remember him, yet I beg of you that, as it is the will of God, you will not let yourself be misled by the news; know then alas, I don't know how I can tell you--alas, my dear Ser Jacomo, alas, my Father and my brother, I know not what to do, for I have lost all I cared for. I do not see you, and I know not how you are. Know then that our love and our father--alas, alas, Neri di Landoccio, alas, took sick on the 8th of March, Monday night, about daybreak, on account of the great cold, and the cough increasing, he could not get over it, alas. He passed out of his life, confessed, and with all the sacraments of the Holy Church, and on the 12th of March was buried by the brethren of Mount Olivet, outside the Porta Tufi, and died in the morning at the Aurora at break of day."

According to the writer, Neri did not die until some hours after he had been buried at the Porta Tufi!

Catherine's influence lingered in almost all those who had once responded to it. But the quality that remains rousing to the present day was her unremitting remembrance that one cannot be good without being happy. Though due to a different source, the spirit of the Renaissance seemed to emanate from her--the spirit that laboured so hard, in a world rich in all manner of things, to be joyful every minute. In Catherine's case, it was the result, not only of a realization of life's inherent wondrousness, but of an unconscious knowledge that heroism is never anything but smiling; that the acceptance which is not absolute, composed, and tendered in fulness of heart, is but a semi-acceptance after all.

In addition, Catherine had the one supreme characteristic that no age can render less superb or less inspiring. She was a nature drenched in loving-kindness. Consciously and unconsciously love streamed out of her, penetrating and unifying every soul she came in contact with. At all times there is nothing the world stands more in need of than loving saints,--at all times there is nothing that brings more creatures out of mistakenness, intractability, and mean-souled egoism than a glowing greatness of heart. And finally, there is nothing so vividly illuminating upon the intense and vital beauty of life and human efforts than the persons who, like Catherine, have but to enter a room, and,--satisfied, aflame, compassionate,--instantly transpose its atmosphere into delicious, renewing goodness.

BEATRICE D'ESTE

Beatrice D'Este could never have been a beautiful woman, though most contemporary writers affirmed that she was. Neither was she particularly good; nevertheless, very few women of the Renaissance make anything like the same intimacy of appeal. Nothing in her life has become old-fashioned. She suggests no reflections peculiar merely to the time in which she lived. The drama of her domestic existence is so familiar and modern, that it might be the secret history of half the charming women of one's acquaintance.

At the same time she was vividly typical of the Renaissance. Nobody expressed more completely what the determined quest for beauty and joy could do. And as far as she was concerned it could do everything--except make a woman happy. Her life, in fact, is one of the most absorbing instances of the tragedy that lies in wait for the majority of women after the pleasantness of youth is over.

Born at Ferrara on June 24, 1475, Beatrice was the younger sister of the great Isabella D'Este, who became one of the chief connoisseurs of the Renaissance. There is always some pain entailed in being the plainer sister of a beauty. Triumph also, in those days, was entirely for the precocious. Isabella embodied precocity itself. Though only a year older than Beatrice, she showed herself incomparably the more graceful, the more receptive, the more premature of the two. At six she had become the talk of the Ferrarese court circle. As a future woman was desired to do, she already showed signs of culture, of tact, of fascination. A pretty little prodigy, with hair like fine spun silk, her hand was constantly being asked for in marriage; and no visitor ever came to the court but Isabella was sent for to show off her premature accomplishments.

There is little said about Beatrice. A second girl had been so frankly unneeded that at her birth all public rejoicings were omitted. She passed her babyhood with her grandfather, the King of Naples, and when she came back, a round contented child, with a chubby face and black hair, she served chiefly as a foil to Isabella, who was like some fine and dainty flower, with her pale soft hair and finished elegancies of behaviour. At Ferrara education had become a hobby. A son of the great Guarino, who with Vittorino da Feltre practically laid the foundations of modern schooling, had the chief control of their education. It was not a bad one, perhaps, save for its excess. These two mites were at lessons of some kind from the time they got up to the time they went to bed. Happily, the Renaissance was all for the open air, and a good deal of their education took place in the garden of a country villa belonging to the D'Estes. Petrarch's sonnets were among the lighter literature allowed them, and a good many of the sonnets were set to music especially for their thin incongruous voices. Guarino was their master for Cicero, Virgil, Roman and Greek history; other teachers took them in dancing, deportment, music, composition, and the rudiments of French. Isabella, indeed, is said to have spoken Latin as easily as her native tongue.

Though a little severe, Leonora was a capable and conscientious woman. Most of the qualities that Beatrice could have inherited from her mother would have been very good for temperament--presence of mind, courage, intelligence, decision. The girl's light-heartedness she probably got from her Uncle Borso, Ercole's brother and predecessor, whose fat and smiling face Corsa's painting has made the very type of cruel joviality. Ercole was not jovial, and the chief characteristics he transmitted to his daughters were strong artistic and literary passions, a gift for diplomacy, and, perhaps, a little elasticity in the matter of conscience.

Culture pervaded the atmosphere at the court of Ferrara. And though Leonora saw to it that the children were strictly trained in religious observances, it was essentially life, and a full and engrossing life, that they were being prepared for. At six Isabella was already engaged to the future Duke of Mantua. Some time afterwards, Ludovico Sforza of Milan, uncle and regent for the young Duke Giangaleazzo, wrote and asked for her in marriage. He was not a person to refuse lightly. The real duke everybody knew to be foolish almost to the point of mental deficiency. Il Moro, as Ludovico was called, held the power of Milan, and politically an alliance with Milan would be good for Ferrara. Ercole answered the request by saying that his eldest daughter was already promised to Mantua, but that he had another daughter a year younger, and if the King of Naples, who had adopted her, gave his consent, Ludovico could have her instead. The political value of the marriage remained the same, and Ludovico accepted without demur the little makeshift lady. Hence, at nine years old, Beatrice, as a substitute for her more elegant sister, became engaged to a man of twenty-nine. She was then still living with her grandfather at Naples. But when, in the following year, she returned to Ferrara, to be educated with Isabella, she was publicly recognized as Ludovico's future wife, and known as the Duchess of Bari, the title to be hers after marriage.

It was over this engagement that Beatrice was made acutely to realize the difference of life's ways with the plain and the bewitching. The young Marquis of Mantua soon became an ardent lover of his golden-haired lady. He wrote to her, he sent her presents; a slight but pretty love affair went on between the two during all the years of their engagement. And when in due course they were married, it was with every show of eagerness upon the side of the handsome bridegroom. Ludovico, on the other hand, took no notice whatever of the childish Beatrice; there was no interchange of winning courtesies, no presents, no letters. Twice, when the marriage was definitely settled, Ludovico put it off; and on the second occasion, at any rate, no girl could avoid the sting of wounded vanity. Everybody had been eager to marry Isabella. Beatrice also, according to the notions of her time, was grown up, and far too clear-witted not to understand the gossip following upon Ludovico's second withdrawal. Unmistakably she was not wanted. Her future husband had his heart already filled. There was another woman in the case, and a woman loved with such intensity that Il Moro literally had not the courage to face marriage with a different lady. On the arrival of the ambassadors asking for a second delay, an agent of the court wrote that everybody was annoyed and the Duke of Ferrara extremely angry.

This was in April, 1495, and for several months Beatrice lived on quietly in the Castello at Ferrara. To deepen the dulness, not only Isabella, but her half-sister Lucrezia, was now married. Among the people of the court it was openly said that the marriage with Ludovico would probably not take place at all. Beatrice went back to lessons, music--she was all her life a great lover of music--and to needlework in the garden. But she probably felt fiercely dispirited and without hope. Thankfulness for life itself cannot exist in youth. At fifteen it is not possible to thank God for just the length of time ahead. Most likely, also, she hated Ludovico. No girl of any spirit could have done otherwise, and Beatrice had more spirit than most.

Then, suddenly, in August, another ambassador arrived from Milan, and even then hopes began to float again. The ambassador had come this time with a present from the bridegroom to his betrothed. It was exquisite--a necklace of pearls made into flowers, with a pear-shaped pendant of rubies, pearls, and diamonds. The ambassador came also to fix a day for the wedding. Ludovico had at last made up his mind to the rupture with his mistress, Cecilia Gallerani, the rare and beautifully mannered woman, who has been compared, with Isabella D'Este and Vittoria Colonna, as among the most cultured women of the Renaissance.

Now, at last, Beatrice became brusquely a person of importance. The subject of Cecilia Gallerani was dropped like a burning cinder, and outwardly everything smoothed to a satin surface. There was more money than in the Mantuan marriage, and no expense was consequently spared in Beatrice's trousseaux. Only Leonora still worried a little. Ludovico came of a bad stock--the only one among the family to show fine qualities had been the famous Francesco Sforza, founder of the dynasty.

As for the present duke's father, and Ludovico's brother, Galeazzo Maria, he had been a fiend, whose very soundness of mind was questionable. True, Ludovico's own ability was indubitable. The skill with which he had steered himself from exile into the regency could not be questioned. Moreover, though nominally only Regent, he had already commenced to drive in the thin end of the wedge of usurpation. The real duke was old enough to control his own state, and had recently been married to Isabella, daughter of the King of Naples. Notwithstanding this, the regency continued with a grasp tightened, rather than loosened, upon the affairs of Northern Italy. Meanwhile preparations for the marriage were rapid and luxurious, and as soon as possible, though it was then in the depth of winter, Beatrice and her suite started for the wedding. At Pavia Ludovico was waiting to receive them, and as soon as Beatrice had been helped on to a horse, wonderfully caparisoned for the occasion, the two rode slowly side by side from the water's edge--she had come by boat up the Po--across the bridge that spans the river Ticino, and through the gates of the Castello of Pavia.

It would be interesting to know what lay in the minds of both. In the case of Ludovico one surmise has as much likelihood as another. He was a man much experienced in women, and to a person whose mistresses were always beautiful and interesting, Beatrice, at first sight, could have offered very small attractions. She had not the features to possess beauty of the finest quality. At the same time she was compensated by almost all the minor enticements. The smooth and delicate freshness of youth was fragrant in her, and, like Isabella, she was extremely graceful in body. But the chief attraction of her face sprang from its oddity, and the inner rogue it suggested. According to rigid canons she was plain, but her plainness was so near to prettiness that it was as often as not over the border.

The first impression given by her portrait in the Altar-piece, said to be Lemale's, is disappointing. From her personality the expectation is of something different--a little more distinguished, a little more wanton, and a little more incontestably seductive. But a mild fascination comes with familiarity. Waywardness and intelligence are both in the face; the gift of humour is clear as day. Her expression radiates a mixture of sauciness and wisdom. In certain clothes and in certain moods she must have looked adorable, more especially before she was actually dressed, when her curls hung upon her shoulders.

What Beatrice thought of Ludovico is more easily hazarded. The man was handsome, and bore every sign of a personal force of character. His profile formed too straight a line, but in the general effect his features were impressive and masterful. Beatrice was fifteen, and as Isabella's plain sister had never yet been incensed with too much flattery. Ludovico had in fact reached at her childlike heart with unequal advantages; confronted by this suave and dignified person a girl's imagination had everything to feed upon.

They were married next morning, and a few days later Beatrice made her state entry into Milan--Ludovico, Giangaleazzo, the real duke, his wife Isabella, and every Milanese person of importance, meeting her at the gates. She and Ludovico then rode side by side in a procession through the town, the horses being decorated and the streets lined with people to cheer them as they passed.

But the really interesting incident of the day was the meeting of the two girls, the reigning duchess and the duchess of the Regent. The situation pushed them into antagonism, and into mean and agitated rivalries. Isabella's was the position of easier righteousness, Beatrice's the one of more colossal temptations. Everything moreover in the future was to help them into unfairness. The wife of the futile duke was cringed to by nobody. All Milan cossetted and flattered the wife of the Regent who held the power, and suggested still greater power in the future. To have been meek and secondary would have required a temperament of great spiritual vitality. Beatrice came of a worldly family, and the reasons for not tethering ambition grew to be very specious. Giangaleazzo, as head of the State, was too clearly incapable. Il Moro did all the work, bore all the responsibility, and when necessary, all the execration. Why should an idle, dull-witted boy, who did nothing, enjoy the benefit of public precedence? Why should Beatrice and her husband walk humbly behind these two, whose importance was as a balloon inflated for the occasion?

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