revengeful, but lavishly generous to his followers and dependents, lofty and implacable to his enemies, ferociously fervid in favour of his friends, heedless of the right or wrong in their cause, embodied many of the characteristics, good and evil, of the great feudal noble of the fifteenth century. The archbishop was a prelate much more skilled in the lance than in the breviary, and being dispossessed of the revenues of his bishopric with his kinsfolk, the Medici, spent the greater part of his life in active and persevering labours to restore them in Florence; and being endowed with a very sanguine, restless, and courageous disposition, was not one of the least formidable of the enemies of the republic.

The sons of the Duke of Gravina, on the other hand, represented the passing and the approaching era. The Lord Paolo, fraught with the same violent passions, but governing them by a finer reason, and modified in manners by the refined tastes which began to prevail; his brother, the cardinal, learned, polished, ambitious, and intriguing, represented the new generation, while the young Fabio, studious, melancholy, and gentle, somewhat shadowed forth that weaker but more elegant and calm age which was to succeed. Traces of the approaching changes appeared even in the military household of the Duke of Gravina; artists and scholars of various pretensions mingled with the brawling soldiery who crowded it; and discussions of philosophy and Arcadian contentions in verse made themselves heard amidst the din of arms. Brutal mercenaries, refined poets, gorgeous painters, plotting exiles, intriguing

ecclesiastics, composed groups in which might be discerued a fair epitome of the times.

The opinions which Bembo entertained on the subject of the projected alliance between his prince and the daughter of the Borgias, which had been much deepened by the sight of her surpassing beauty, were not likely to meet with any check in the society with which he now mingled. The Orsini and their guests were alike absorbed in the hopes and fears which the alliance prompted. Ambition in the Duke of Gravina, and desire to secure his house from the destruction menaced by the Borgias, made the thought ever uppermost in his mind. The confederate barons regarded it as the only durable cement of the new peace and of their own power; and the alliance was especially dear on that account to the Duke of Urbino, whose love of learned leisure and of the arts, personal infirmities, and great possessions, rendered him the most unwilling to engage in broils, and the most likely to be assailed by them.

The canon was somewhat surprised at Sir Reginald's demeanour on learning the resolution of his illustrious brother-in-arms. It seemed that he admired his unshaken determination against the projected alliance; but in speaking of it, he so marvelled at Alfonso's ability to refuse such happiness, and launched into praises so passionate of Lucrezia's beauty, that Bembo laughingly bade him remember that love in Italy was not of the slow growth of the north. The knight's martial visage suffused like that of a young maiden, and Bembo thought more of his own words than at first he had. But the

light shade of suspicion vanished, when he observed the warmth of the friendship which the frank and undissembling northman had contracted with Paolo Orsino.

Two or three days intervened before the opening of the jubilee, and meanwhile the Hospitaller began to imagine that in coming to Rome for evidence against Lucrezia, he was likely to find his labour in vain. Vague rumours, indeed, he encountered similar to those which had already prejudiced him so strongly against her; but very strangely all this darkness which surrounded Lucrezia seemed only to give a contrast which heightened the splendour of her brilliant qualities, and the interest which her beauty and talents universally created. The Roman populace, with a species of that enthusiasm for all that is illustrious, which they have preserved among the few relics of their glory, idolized her for the mere perfection of her person; and, moreover, believed that to her they owed the paternal mildness of the rule, with which Alexander had replaced the ruthless tyranny of the barons. It seemed impossible to discover any tangible proof, or even clue to one; all that was certainly known was in Lucrezia's favour.

The Knight of St. John did not often see Sir Reginald during this interval, partly at his own desire, and partly because the latter was deeply engaged in warlike exercises with the Lord Paolo, who earnestly desired to shine before his mistress in a tournament, which was to be given among the other rejoicings of the festival. The knights of England and of France surpassed those of all other countries in the science of these military

poems

which was

pastimes, and Le Beaufort, as might be expected in one of such strength and agility, trained to arms, and delighting in little else from his childhood, was of amazing dexterity in all exercise of the body. Alfonso had also been his pupil, and owed much of his skill to the young tramontane's instructions. But Messer Bembo presented himself as frequently as the prince would permit, and always with some new insinuations in favour of Lucrezia. Among the rest he had discovered that she was a poetess, and in the little which Pier de' Medici and others of the guests in the Orsini palace ascribed to her, there breathed a strange mixture of voluptuousness and melancholy, tenderness and gaiety, that but for the general shadow indefinably visible over all, the Hospitaller would have thought it impossible that so dark a spirit could give utterance to phantoms so radiantly coloured, and dancing in pleasurable light. Apprehending that among the multitude of strangers whom he might expect to encounter, some one would recognise him, Alfonso rigidly adhered to his monkish costume, the hood of which enabled him to conceal his countenance without exciting attention. The austerity of his general conduct authorized this strictobserving the rules of his order, which, in that age of dissolution and license might else have challenged suspicion. And thus he spent his time, restlessly wandering about the great city and its ruins, striving in vain, although a scholar, and fraught with the grand historical recollections which haunt all its circuit, to take an interest in what he beheld, and rather distracted than amused with the Babel-like

Less in

confusion of nations, languages, and costumes, which surrounded him.

The days immediately preceding the opening of the jubilee were devoted by the pilgrims to solemn and penitential devotion, confession, and the fulfilment of various vows. The stairs of St. Peter were continually crowded with devotees, who spent whole days in ascending them on their knees, uttering a certain number of prayers on each step, persons of the highest rank, and especially women, being of the number. But it raised strange thoughts on the depravity of the times, to witness how continually the confessional of the grand Penitentiary was entered by masked personages, though professedly instituted for the audience of crimes of a magnitude beyond all the extensive powers of absolution confided to the clergy in general. On this subject Alfonso took a new and extraordinary interest when he heard that the office was exercised by the Dominican confessor of Donna Lucrezia. He conceived a project which was in keeping with the characteristics of the Italian mind, but which was probably not uninfluenced by the superstitious feeling to which the associations of his whole life had subjected even the powerful intellect of the Prince of Ferrara.

The thought occurred to him that he would seek the presence of the Penitentiary, and confess the horrors which filled his mind under pretence of learning whether such suspicions against the pontiff, although involuntary, were an offence against the church. The look or even gestures of the confessor of Lucrezia might throw more light than any words