DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42861#0265
FEDERICO’S INFANT CHARMS 225
cleverness and charms. “ The boy always seemed
intelligent,” she writes on the 4th April, “ but since
Your Excellency’s departure, he surprises me every
hour with his pretty ways, and seems determined to
keep me amused in your absence. He sits in your
place at meals, and plays a thousand other tricks,
which I do not tell Your Excellency lest I should
excite your envy.” Again, two days later, she wrote :
“ Yesterday, when I was saying my office, he came
in and said he wanted to find his papa, and turned
over all the cards till he found a figure with a beard,
upon which he was delighted, and kissed it six times
over, saying, ‘ Papa hello! ’ with the greatest joy
possible.”1
Another and less pleasant task to which Isabella
now turned her attention was the settlement of her
accounts. The expenses of her visit to Ferrara had
been heavy; besides the cost of her own sumptuous
toilette, and those of her ladies, presents of costly
brocade and chains had to be given to the actors
and buffoons, the trumpeters and musicians. Marino
Sanuto tells us that on this occasion the Marchesa
had shown remarkable liberality to all of these, but
especially to the Spanish jesters in the bride’s train.2
At Venice, as we have seen, she had been engaged
in raising fresh loans to pay the Albani and redeem her
jewels ; and soon after her return to Mantua she ad-
dressed a letter to her father,Duke Ercole, to whom she
had more than once applied for help in her difficulties.
This time, however, she gave him a full statement of
her income and expenditure, which is of great in-
terest, and shows that if this brilliant lady occasionally
1 Luzio, Precettori, p, 38.
2 Diarii, iv, 230.
VOL. I.
P
cleverness and charms. “ The boy always seemed
intelligent,” she writes on the 4th April, “ but since
Your Excellency’s departure, he surprises me every
hour with his pretty ways, and seems determined to
keep me amused in your absence. He sits in your
place at meals, and plays a thousand other tricks,
which I do not tell Your Excellency lest I should
excite your envy.” Again, two days later, she wrote :
“ Yesterday, when I was saying my office, he came
in and said he wanted to find his papa, and turned
over all the cards till he found a figure with a beard,
upon which he was delighted, and kissed it six times
over, saying, ‘ Papa hello! ’ with the greatest joy
possible.”1
Another and less pleasant task to which Isabella
now turned her attention was the settlement of her
accounts. The expenses of her visit to Ferrara had
been heavy; besides the cost of her own sumptuous
toilette, and those of her ladies, presents of costly
brocade and chains had to be given to the actors
and buffoons, the trumpeters and musicians. Marino
Sanuto tells us that on this occasion the Marchesa
had shown remarkable liberality to all of these, but
especially to the Spanish jesters in the bride’s train.2
At Venice, as we have seen, she had been engaged
in raising fresh loans to pay the Albani and redeem her
jewels ; and soon after her return to Mantua she ad-
dressed a letter to her father,Duke Ercole, to whom she
had more than once applied for help in her difficulties.
This time, however, she gave him a full statement of
her income and expenditure, which is of great in-
terest, and shows that if this brilliant lady occasionally
1 Luzio, Precettori, p, 38.
2 Diarii, iv, 230.
VOL. I.
P