Rome in the odor of sanctity, after doing such good works as surprised every one.  His brother Ridolfo succeeded to the marquisate, and fell into a quarrel with Duke William about lands, which dispute Luigi composed before his death.  About all which the reverend Jesuit Father Tolomei has shown how far heaviness can go in the dramatic form, and has written a pitiless play, wherein everybody goes into a convent with the fall of the curtain.  Till the reader has read this play, he has never (properly speaking) been bored.  For the happiness of mankind, it has not been translated out of the original Italian.

From the time of the first Vincenzo’s death, there are only two tragic events which lift the character of Mantuan history above the quality of chronique scandaleuse, namely, the Duke Ferdinand’s repudiation of Camilla Faa di Casale, and the sack of Mantua in 1630.  The first of these events followed close upon the demise of the splendid Vincenzo; for his son Francesco reigned but a short time, and died, leaving a little daughter of three years to the guardianship of her uncle, the Cardinal Ferdinand.  The law of the Mantuan succession excluded females; and Ferdinand, dispensed from his ecclesiastical functions by the Pope, ascended the ducal throne.  In 1615, not long after his accession, as the chronicles relate, in passing through a chamber of the palace he saw a young girl playing upon a cithern, and being himself young, and of the ardent temper of the Gonzagas, he fell in love with the fair minstrel.  She was the daughter of a noble servant of the Duke, who had once been his ambassador to the court of the Duke of Savoy, and was called Count Ardizzo Faa Monferrino di Casale; but his Grace did not on that account hesitate to attempt corrupting her; indeed, a courtly father of that day might well be supposed to have few scruples that would interfere with a gracious sovereign’s designs upon his daughter.  Singularly enough, the chastity of Camilla was so well guarded that the ex-cardinal was at last forced to propose marriage.  It seems that the poor girl loved her ducal wooer; and besides, the ducal crown was a glittering temptation, and she consented to a marriage which, for state and family reasons, was made secret.  When the fact was bruited, it raised the wrath and ridicule of Ferdinand’s family, and the Duke’s sister Margaret, Duchess of Ferrara, had so lofty a disdain of his mesalliance with an inferior, that she drove him to desperation with her sarcasms.  About this time Camilla’s father died, with strong evidences of poisoning; and the wife being left helpless and friendless, her noble husband resorted to the artifice of feigning that there had never been any marriage, and thus sought to appease his family.  Unhappily, however, he had given her a certificate of matrimony, which she refused to surrender when he put her away, so that the Duke, desiring afterwards to espouse the daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, was obliged to present