Good mothers, instead of teaching their daughters the use of the needle, teach them the arts of rouging, dressing, singing, and dancing.  Naples and Milan scarcely produce silk enough, or India and Peru gold and gems enough, to deck out female impudence and pride.  Courtiers and warriors perfume themselves as delicately as ladies; and even the food is scented, that the mouth may exhale fragrance.  The galleries and halls of the houses are painted full of the loves of Mars and Venus, Leda and the Swan, Jove and Danae, while the devout solace themselves with such sacred subjects as Susannah and the Elders.  The flower of chastity seems withered in Mantua.  No longer in Lydia nor in Cyprus, but in Mantua, is fixed the realm of pleasure.”  The Mantuans were a different people in the old republican times, when a fine was imposed for blasphemy, and the blasphemer put into a basket and drowned in the lake, if he did not pay within fifteen days; which must have made profanity a luxury even to the rich.  But in that day a man had to pay twenty soldi (seventy-five cents) if he spoke to a woman in church; and women were not allowed even the moderate diversion of going to funerals, and could not wear silk lace about the neck, nor have dresses that dragged more than a yard, nor crowns of pearls or gems, nor belts worth more than ten livres (twenty-five dollars), nor purses worth more than fifteen soldi (fifty cents.)

Possibly as an antidote for the corruption brought into the world with Vincenzo, there was another Gonzaga born about the same period, who became in due time Saint Louis Gonzaga, and remains to this day one of the most powerful friends of virtue to whom a good Catholic can pray.  He is particularly recommended by his biographer, the Jesuit Father Cesari, in cases of carnal temptation, and improving stories are told Italian youth of the miracles he works under such circumstances.  He vowed chastity for his own part at an age when most children do not know good from evil, and he carried the fulfillment of this vow to such extreme, that, being one day at play of forfeits with other boys and girls, and being required to kiss—­not one of the little maidens—­but her shadow on the wall, he would not, preferring to lose his pawn.  Everybody, I think, will agree with Father Cesari that it would be hard to draw chastity finer than this.

San Luigi Gonzaga descended from that Ridolfo who put his wife to death, and his father was Marquis of Castiglione delle Stivere.  He was born in 1568, and, being the first son, was heir to the marquisate; but from his earliest years he had a call to the Church.  His family did everything possible to dissuade him—­his father with harshness, and his uncle, Duke William of Mantua, with tenderness—­from his vocation.  The latter even sent a “bishop of rare eloquence” to labor with the boy at Castiglione; but everything was done in vain.  In due time Luigi joined the Company of Jesus, renounced this world, and died at