The Prince of Salerno treated him more as an honored friend and confidential adviser than as a paid official.  His income was good, and leisure was allowed him for the prosecution of his literary studies.  In this flourishing state of his affairs, Bernardo contracted an alliance with Porzia de’Rossi, a lady of a noble house, which came originally from Pistoja, but had been established for some generations in Naples.  She was connected by descent or marriage with the houses of Gambacorti, Caracciolo, and Caraffa.  Their first child, Cornelia, was born about the year 1537.  Their second, Torquato, saw the light in March 1544 at Sorrento, where his father had been living some months previously and working at his poem, the Amadigi.

At the time of Torquato’s birth Bernardo was away from home, in Lombardy, France, and Flanders, traveling on missions from his Prince.  However, he returned to Sorrento for a short while in 1545, and then again was forced to leave his family.  Married at the mature age of forty-three, Bernardo was affectionately attached to his young wife, and proud of his children.  But the exigencies of a courtier’s life debarred him from enjoying the domestic happiness for which his sober and gentle nature would have fitted him.  In 1547 the events happened which ruined him for life, separated him for ever from Porzia, drove him into indigent exile, and marred the prospects of his children.  In that year, the Spanish Viceroy, Don Pietro Toledo, attempted to introduce the Inquisition, on its Spanish basis, into Naples.  The population resented this exercise of authority with the fury of despair, rightly judging that the last remnants of their liberty would be devoured by the foul monster of the Holy Office.  They besought the Prince of Salerno to intercede for them with his master, Charles V., whom he had served loyally up to this time, and who might therefore be inclined to yield to his expostulations.  The Prince doubted much whether it would be prudent to accept the mission of intercessor.  He had two counsellors, Bernardo Tasso and Vincenzo Martelli.  The latter, who was an astute Florentine, advised him to undertake nothing so perilous as interposition between the Viceroy and the people.  Tasso, on the contrary, exhorted him to sacrifice personal interest, honors, and glory, for the duty which he owed his country.  The Prince chose the course which Tasso recommended.  Charles V. disgraced him, and he fled from Naples to France, adopting openly the cause of his imperial sovereign’s enemies.  He was immediately declared a rebel, with confiscation of his fiefs and property.  Bernardo and his infant son were included in the sentence.  After twenty-two years of service, Bernardo now found himself obliged to choose between disloyalty to his Prince or a disastrous exile.  He took the latter course, and followed Ferrante Sanseverino to Paris.  But Bernardo Tasso, though proving himself a man of honor in this severe trial, was not of the stuff of