sent by the Marchioness knew them, and said to the king, ’Sire, these are the attendants of him whom I seek; but they have changed their names.’  The king caused them to be separated one from another, and then asked them of their Lord; and they, finding themselves separated, minutely narrated everything; and the king immediately sent for Federico, whom his officers found miserably ill on a heap of straw.  He was brought to the palace, where the king ordered him to be cared for, sending the messenger back to his mother to advise her how the men had been found and in what great misery.  The Marchioness went to her husband, and, having cast herself at his feet, besought him of a grace.  The Marquis answered that he would grant everything, so it did not treat of Federico.  Then the lady opened him the letter of the king of Naples, which had such effect that it softened the soul of the Marquis, showing him in how great misery his son had been; and so, giving the letter to the Marchioness, he said, ’Do that which pleases you.’  The Marchioness straightway sent the prince money, and clothes to clothe him, in order that he should return to Mantua; and having come, the son cast himself at his father’s feet, imploring pardon for himself and for his attendants; and he pardoned them, and gave those attendants enough to live honorably and like noblemen, and they were called The Faithful of the House of Gonzaga, and from them come the Fedeli of Mantua.

“The Marquis then, not to break faith, caused Federico to take Margherita, daughter of the Duke of Bavaria, for his wife, and celebrated the nuptials splendidly; so that there remained the greatest love between father and son.”

The son succeeded to the father’s dominion in 1478; and it is recorded of him in the “Flower of the Chronicles,” that he was a hater of idleness, and a just man, greatly beloved by his people.  They chiefly objected to him that he placed a Jew, Eusebio Malatesta, at the head of civil affairs; and this Jew was indeed the cause of great mischief:  for Ridolfo Gonzaga coming to reside with his wife for a time at the court of his brother, the Marquis, Malatesta fell in love with her.  She repelled him, and the bitter Jew thereupon so poisoned her husband’s mind with accusations against her chastity, that he took her home to his town of Lazzaro, and there put the unhappy and innocent lady to death by the headsman’s hand in the great square of the city.

Federico was Marquis only six years, and died in 1484, leaving his marquisate to his son Francesco, the most ambitious, warlike, restless, splendid prince of his magnificent race.  This Gonzaga wore a beard, and brought the custom into fashion in Italy again.  He founded the famous breed of Mantuan horses, and gave them about free-handedly to other sovereigns of his acquaintance.  To the English king he presented a steed which, if we may trust history, could have been sold for almost its weight in gold.  He was so fond of hunting that he kept two hundred dogs of the chase, and one hundred and fifty birds of prey.