DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.36838#0357
284 COUNT BALDASSARE CASTIGLIONE
' At the same time/ he adds, ' one must have bread
to eat! Here at Bologna my expenses and the keep
of my horses cost little less than a ducat and a half a
day, so that I cannot aRord to forget those who on
their part owe me money/ At the same time he
warns his mother that war is very likely to break out
before long, and begs her not only to send Cristoforo
and Smeraldo with his horses before the passes are
guarded, but also to employ every available labourer
at Casatico to get in the harvest, since he foresees that
there will soon be trouble at Mantua. ^ The reports
which reached him from Rome were indeed ominous.
The Popes wrath against Venice had hardly been
assuaged before his fury was directed against his former
allies—France and Ferrara. He had an old quarrel
with Louis XII. over the nomination of French
Bishops, and resented the high-handed measures of
the French monarch in North Italy, while he had
long looked enviously on Ferrara as a Ref of the
Church, and could not forgive Alfonso's close alliance
with France. 'The Pope is old and gouty,' wrote
Trevisano from Rome in April, ' but he is deter-
mined to be master of the world's game.' When, in
May, news reached the Holy Father that Bishop
Schinner had concluded a treaty with the Swiss, he
exclaimed joyfully : ' Now we shall be able to drive
the French out of Italy.' He could not sleep, he
said, because of the Frenchmen, and spent the night
pacing up and down his room, brooding over his war-
like designs. Every one felt that there was trouble
in the air. ' The French in Rome look like corpses,'
wrote the same envoy a few weeks later, ' and His
Holiness is even more violent in his language against
them than he was against us last year.' The Duke
* Cod. Vat. Lat., 8% 10, fol. 101.
' At the same time/ he adds, ' one must have bread
to eat! Here at Bologna my expenses and the keep
of my horses cost little less than a ducat and a half a
day, so that I cannot aRord to forget those who on
their part owe me money/ At the same time he
warns his mother that war is very likely to break out
before long, and begs her not only to send Cristoforo
and Smeraldo with his horses before the passes are
guarded, but also to employ every available labourer
at Casatico to get in the harvest, since he foresees that
there will soon be trouble at Mantua. ^ The reports
which reached him from Rome were indeed ominous.
The Popes wrath against Venice had hardly been
assuaged before his fury was directed against his former
allies—France and Ferrara. He had an old quarrel
with Louis XII. over the nomination of French
Bishops, and resented the high-handed measures of
the French monarch in North Italy, while he had
long looked enviously on Ferrara as a Ref of the
Church, and could not forgive Alfonso's close alliance
with France. 'The Pope is old and gouty,' wrote
Trevisano from Rome in April, ' but he is deter-
mined to be master of the world's game.' When, in
May, news reached the Holy Father that Bishop
Schinner had concluded a treaty with the Swiss, he
exclaimed joyfully : ' Now we shall be able to drive
the French out of Italy.' He could not sleep, he
said, because of the Frenchmen, and spent the night
pacing up and down his room, brooding over his war-
like designs. Every one felt that there was trouble
in the air. ' The French in Rome look like corpses,'
wrote the same envoy a few weeks later, ' and His
Holiness is even more violent in his language against
them than he was against us last year.' The Duke
* Cod. Vat. Lat., 8% 10, fol. 101.