time (for he had not seen her in the interval), his disguise was completed by the alterations which sorrow had made in his appearance.  For, at all events, she did not know him.  She saw in him nothing but a haggard stranger who was acquainted with the writer of the letters, and to whom they referred for particulars of the risk which her brother ran, unless she could afford him her protection.  These particulars were given by the stranger with all the pathos of the real man, and the loving sister fainted away.  On her recovery, the visitor said what he could to reassure her, and then by degrees discovered himself.  Cornelia welcomed him in the tenderest manner.  She did all that he desired; and gave out to her friends that the gentleman was a cousin from Bergamo, who had come to Naples on family affairs.

For a little while, the affection of his sister, and the beauty and freshness of Sorrento, rendered the mind of Tasso more easy:  but his restlessness returned.  He feared he had mortally offended the Duke of Ferrara; and, with his wonted fluctuation of purpose, he now wished to be restored to his presence for the very reason he had run away from it.  He did not know with what vengeance he might be pursued.  He wrote to the duke; but received no answer.  The Duchess of Urbino was equally silent.  Leonora alone responded, but with no encouragement.  These appearances only made him the more anxious to dare or to propitiate his doom; and he accordingly determined to put himself in the duke’s hands.  His sister entreated him in vain to alter his resolution.  He quitted her before the autumn was over; and, proceeding to Rome, went directly to the house of the duke’s agent there, who, in concert with the Ferrarese ambassador, gave his master advice of the circumstance.  Gonzaga, however, and another good friend, Cardinal Albano, doubted whether it would be wise in the poet to return to Ferrara under any circumstances.  They counselled him to be satisfied with being pardoned at a distance, and with having his papers and other things returned to him; and the two friends immediately wrote to the duke requesting as much.  The duke apparently acquiesced in all that was desired; but he said that the illness of his sister, the Duchess of Urbino, delayed the procuration of the papers, which, it seems, were chiefly in her hands.  The upshot was, that the papers did not come; and Tasso, with a mixture of rage and fear, and perhaps for more reasons than he has told, became uncontrollably desirous of retracing the rest of his steps to Ferrara.

Love may have been among these reasons—­probably was; though it does not follow that the passion must have been for a princess.  The poet now, therefore, petitioned to that effect; and Alfonso wrote again, and said he might come, but only on condition of his again undergoing the ducal course of medicine; adding, that if he did not, he was to be finally expelled his highness’s territories.