affection by jealousy, is uncertain.[25] At any rate he paid the countess such marked attentions, and wrote for her and a lady of her suite such splendid poetry, that all Ferrara rang with this amour.  A sonnet in Tasso’s handwriting, addressed to Leonora d’Este and commented by her own pen, which even Guasti, no credulous believer in the legend of the poet’s love, accepts as genuine, may be taken as affording proof that the princess was deeply wounded by her servant’s conduct.[26]

[Footnote 24:  Lettere, vol. iii. p. xxx. note 34.]

[Footnote 25:  Guarino, in a sonnet, hinted at the second supposition.  See Rosini’s Saggio sugli Amori, &c. vol. xxxiii. of his edition of Tasso, p. 51.]

[Footnote 26:  Lettere, vol. iii. p. xxxi.]

It is obvious that, though Tasso’s letters at this period show no signs of a diseased mind, his conduct began to strike outsiders as insane.  Francesco de’Medici used the plain words matto and pazzo.  The courtiers of Ferrara, some in pity, some in derision, muttered ‘Madman,’ when he passed.  And he spared no pains to prove that he was losing self-control.  In the month of January 1577, he was seized with scruples of faith, and conceived the notion that he ought to open his mind to the Holy Office.  Accordingly, he appeared before the Inquisitor of Bologna, who after hearing his confession, bade him be of good cheer, for his self-accusations were the outcome of a melancholy humor.  Tasso was, in fact, a Catholic molded by Jesuit instruction in his earliest childhood; and though, like most young students, he had speculated on the groundwork of theology and metaphysic, there was no taint of heresy or disobedience to the Church in his nature.  The terror of the Inquisition was a morbid nightmare, first implanted in his mind by the experience of his father’s collision with the Holy Office, enforced by Antoniano’s strictures on his poem, and justified to some extent by the sinister activity of the institution which had burned a Carnesecchi and a Paleario.  However it grew up, this fancy that he was suspected as a heretic took firm possession of his brain, and subsequently formed a main feature of his mental disease.  It combined with the suspiciousness which now became habitual.  He thought that secret enemies were in the habit of forwarding delations against him to Rome.

All through these years (1575-1577) his enemies drew tighter cords around him.  They were led and directed by Montecatino, the omnipotent persecutor, and hypocritical betrayer.  In his heedlessness Tasso left books and papers loose about his rooms.  These, he had good reason to suppose, were ransacked in his absence.  There follows a melancholy tale of treacherous friends, dishonest servants, false keys, forged correspondence, scraps and fragments of imprudent compositions pieced together and brought forth to incriminate him behind his back.  These arts were employed all through