362 DEATH OF ALFONSO D’ESTE

Denmark. In the following autumn, Duke Alfonso
died very suddenly, on the 31st of October 1534, only
three months after his enemy, Pope Clement VII.
But the loss of this brother, to whom Isabella had
been so tenderly attached from her earliest childhood,
made no difference in the ties which bound her to
Ferrara. The Marchesa’s relations with his children
remained as intimate as before, and when in the
winter of 1536 Renee was ill, and suffering after the
birth of her second daughter Lucrezia, Duke Ercole
wrote to his aunt, begging her to spend carnival at
Ferrara, and amuse his sick wife. Isabella gladly
responded to his appeal, and on the 30th of January,
wrote to tell the Marquis Federico of her safe arrival
at Ferrara. “To-day I arrived here half-an-hour
after nightfall, and was received by the Archbishop
[her nephew Ippolito] four miles from Ferrara,
and found the Duke and many nobles and ladies
awaiting me on the banks of the river. They
escorted me with lighted torches to my lodgings
in the Corte Vecchia of the Castello, opposite
the Church of San Domenico. Soon afterwards I
visited the Duchess, who has had a touch of fever,
but nothing very serious, and then went into the hall
to see the dancing begin.” A few days later she
wrote again, and spoke of enjoying the company of
the Duke and Duchess, and of a supper given by
Ercole in the new rooms of the palace, “ which was
followed by a concert of varied and excellent music,
and afterwards by dancing till bed-time.”1
Isabella, it is evident, had lost none of her powers
of enjoyment with advancing age, and the high
spirits and keen interest with which she entered into
1 Fontana, op. cit.