134 ISABELLA'S PET DWARFS In March 1496, just when Isabella was corresponding with Lorenzo da Pavia about the clavichord, she wrote to beg her father to allow the French clown, Galasso, and Fritello, the wonderful dwarf who danced and sang, and turned somersaults in the air, to the delight of all the Este family, to come and amuse her, saying that she was as cold as ice and as dull as ditch water in her husband's absence! Her only pleasure, she declared in another letter, was to make Mattello dictate letters to the Marquis. One day she nearly died of laughing at the sight of Mattello imitating a tipsy man; another time he appeared in a friar's habit, and was announced as the venerable Padre Bernardino Mattello. When Alfonso d'Este was ill and sad, in 1498, after his wife's death, the Marchesa sent Mattello to amuse him, and her brother wrote in return that he could not express the delight which the buffoon had afforded him, and that he esteemed his presence a greater boon than the gift of a fine castle. Great was Isabella's dismay when soon after his return to Mantua, this pet dwarf fell ill and died, to the grief of the whole court. She visited him repeatedly during his last illness, and told her husband the jokes which the poor fool made on his death-bed. "Most people," wrote Francesco in reply, "can be easily replaced, but Nature will never produce another Mattello." Il primo matto nel mondo, "the foremost fool in the world," as Isabella called him, was interred in S. Francesco, the favourite burial-place of the Gonzaga princes. Tebaldeo wrote his epitaph, and Bonsignori painted his portrait, while the bard Pistoia composed an elegy, in which he says: "If 1 Luzio, Buffoni, &c., in Nuova Antologia, 1891. DOGS AND CATS 135 Mattello is in Paradise, he is making all the saints and angels laugh; if he is in hell, Cerberus will forget to bark." The same wits and poets were called upon to write Latin epigrams and sonnets on Isabella's pet animals, on the Persian cat Martino or the Cagnolino Aura. The novelist Bandello tells us how the Marchesa's presence was heralded by the barking of her little dogs, and on one occasion she desired Brognolo to send to all the convents in Venice for Syrian and Thibet cats, in order that she might choose the finest for herself. These pet animals were buried with great solemnity in the terraced gardens of the Castello opposite the Corte Vecchia, and cypresses and tombstones inscribed with their names marked their graves. All the ladies and gentlemen of Isabella's household were present on these occasions, and her favourite dogs and cats joined in the funeral procession. And it was characteristic of the age that every incident, from the birth of a prince or the fall of an empire, to the death of a fool or pet dog, became an occasion for producing Latin epitaphs and sonnets and elegies in the vulgar tongue. But more serious subjects now claimed Isabella's attention. On the 6th of July, when Mantegna's Madonna was borne through the streets of Mantua, we have seen that the Marchesa's state of health did not allow her to walk in the procession, and that she witnessed the ceremony from Giovanni Gonzaga's house in the Borgo. A week later she gave birth to a second daughter. The babe was named Margherita after Francesco's mother, but her sex was a cause of bitter disappointment to Isabella, who looked with 1 Luzio in Giorn. St. d. Lett. It., vol. xxxiii. 45. 136 BIRTH OF A DAUGHTER envy on her sister Beatrice's two fine boys. The Marquis was more philosophical in this instance, especially when he heard that the child was much prettier than little Leonora and strongly resembled him. He told his wife not to look so coldly on the poor babe, since no doubt God would send them sons all in good time, and if ever a father had reason to be satisfied with his daughters, it was he. His affection for Leonora never changed, and nothing pleased him better than to hear that his little daughter asked after her father and sent him messages. "Madonna Leonora," wrote a secretary to him in Calabria, "commends herself to Your Highness, and would like to have a fine new doll in a silk frock to play with in bed, as her old one is quite worn out." And often, on his hunting expeditions nearer home, he would send her a hare which his dogs had caught, and tell her to eat it for dinner! But Francesco never saw the babe whose birth he had been the first to welcome, and poor little Margherita died before her father's return on the 23rd of September. The war in Calabria, as Isabella had foreseen, proved a tedious and difficult enterprise, and by the end of the summer both parties were heartily sick of the struggle. On the 29th of July, Montpensier was forced to surrender the strong city of Atella after a long blockade and fell dangerously ill of fever. Francesco Gonzaga, ever courteous towards his foes, sent his doctor to the French camp with presents of fruit and game for his brother-in-law, but the Venetian Signory, Marino Sanuto tells us, did not approve of their general's action, and were dissatisfied with his conduct on other grounds. However, they 1 Luzio e Renier, Mantova e Urbino, pp. 75, 87. THE CARDINAL'S HAT 137 declined to allow him to come home on leave, and supported his application when he asked the Pope to make his brother a Cardinal. On his way to Naples, Francesco had spent a few days in Rome, to pay his respects to Alexander VI., who received him with marked favour and presented him with the golden rose. This had encouraged him to renew his old suit on behalf of Sigismondo, and the better to press his claim, he wrote in August to ask his wife to raise seven thousand ducats on the spot, and if necessary to pledge her jewels for this purpose. Isabella, who had already pawned the greater part of her jewels for the same object two years before, and had lately been seeking her father's help to enable her to redeem them, replied in the following letter: "I am of course always ready to obey Your Excellency's commands, but perhaps you have forgotten that most of my jewels are at present in pawn at Venice, not only those which you have given me, but those which I brought when I came as a bride to Mantua or have bought myself since my marriage. I say this, not because I wish to make any difference between yours and mine, but to show you that I have parted from everything and have only four jewels left in the house-the large balass ruby which you gave me when my first child was born, my favourite big diamond, and the last ones which you gave me. If I pledge these, I shall be left entirely without jewels and shall be obliged to wear black, because to appear in coloured silks and brocades without jewels would be ridiculous. Your Excellency will understand that I only say this out of regard for your honour and mine, and for this cause I pray and 138 FRANCESCO'S ILLNESS entreat you not to rob me of these few things, since I would rather give you my camora embroidered with gems than be left without jewels. On this account I will not send away my jewels until I have received Your Excellency's reply." Mantua, August 27, 1496. As before, however, the negotiations regarding the Cardinal's hat proved fruitless, and Isabella was allowed to keep her jewels. When she wrote this letter her husband was seriously ill of fever at Fondi. He had been carried there on a litter, fearing to remain at Naples on account of an old prophecy that he should die in that city. Here he became so dangerously ill that he sent for the Venetian senator Paolo Capello and begged him in case of his death to commend his wife and little daughter to the protection of the Signory-"a sure sign," remarks Sanuto, "that he puts greater trust in Venice than in his brother-in-law of Milan, or his father-in-law of Ferrara." 2 Meanwhile Montpensier was still lying ill at Pozzuoli, and an armistice had been signed between France and Venice, so that there was nothing to keep the Marquis in the South, and as soon as he was fit to move, he started on the journey home. A few days after her infant daughter's death, Isabella set out to meet her husband, accompanied by the Protonotary Sigismondo. Early in October, the Duchess of Urbino came to meet her at Fano, and on the following day Isabella joined Francesco at Ancona, and brought him home by slow stages to Ravenna, and thence up the Po by water to Ferrara and afterwards to Mantua. 1 Luzio, Il Lusso d'Isabella d'Este, in Nuova Antologia, 1896. |