DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0081
LETTERS FROM FERRARA
51
each other in doing them honour, and one Fermo
of Caravazo caused his garden to be stripped for the
Marchesana and her party and loaded them with
lemons and pomegranates.”1
Meanwhile the blank which Isabella’s departure
had left at Ferrara made itself daily felt. Her old
tutor Jacopo Gallino wrote that he could not keep
back his tears when he thought of those happy days
when she read Virgil at his side, and repeated the
Eclogues in her clear voice. At Isabella’s request
he sent her old Latin books to Mantua that she
might pursue her studies and sometimes remember
her poor old tutor. Another servant, Brandelisio
Trotti, describes in his letters how he wanders, from
room to room, through the desolate chambers where
her angelic face once smiled upon him, recalling
each word and act, and saying to himself: “ There
my divine lady lived — here she spoke those sweet,
thoughtful words.” “ In the whole palace,” wrote
Leonora’s chamberlain, Bernardino dei Prosperi,
“ there is not a single courtier or serving woman
who does not feel widowed without Your Highness.
Even the tricks and jests of the dwarfs and clowns
fail to make us laugh.” Most of all to be pitied
was the poor Duchess, who would not even allow
the little window-shutters of Isabella’s apartment
to be opened, saying that she had not the heart to
visit those empty rooms, knowing how great was
the blank that she would find there.
Isabella, to do her justice, did not forget her
old friends. She wrote kind letters to her old tutors,
Battista Guarino and Jacopo Gallino, and sent them
presents of black damask and velvet in gratitude
1 Luzio e Renier, Mantova e Urbino, pp. 54-56.
51
each other in doing them honour, and one Fermo
of Caravazo caused his garden to be stripped for the
Marchesana and her party and loaded them with
lemons and pomegranates.”1
Meanwhile the blank which Isabella’s departure
had left at Ferrara made itself daily felt. Her old
tutor Jacopo Gallino wrote that he could not keep
back his tears when he thought of those happy days
when she read Virgil at his side, and repeated the
Eclogues in her clear voice. At Isabella’s request
he sent her old Latin books to Mantua that she
might pursue her studies and sometimes remember
her poor old tutor. Another servant, Brandelisio
Trotti, describes in his letters how he wanders, from
room to room, through the desolate chambers where
her angelic face once smiled upon him, recalling
each word and act, and saying to himself: “ There
my divine lady lived — here she spoke those sweet,
thoughtful words.” “ In the whole palace,” wrote
Leonora’s chamberlain, Bernardino dei Prosperi,
“ there is not a single courtier or serving woman
who does not feel widowed without Your Highness.
Even the tricks and jests of the dwarfs and clowns
fail to make us laugh.” Most of all to be pitied
was the poor Duchess, who would not even allow
the little window-shutters of Isabella’s apartment
to be opened, saying that she had not the heart to
visit those empty rooms, knowing how great was
the blank that she would find there.
Isabella, to do her justice, did not forget her
old friends. She wrote kind letters to her old tutors,
Battista Guarino and Jacopo Gallino, and sent them
presents of black damask and velvet in gratitude
1 Luzio e Renier, Mantova e Urbino, pp. 54-56.