ffins to mount
to Paradise with a joyous ardor, and launch themselves forth to go to
play upon the blossoming turf of the celestial garden; others stretch
forth their hands to their half-resurrected mothers. The remark may also
be made that all the devils and vices are obese, while the angels and
virtues are thin and slender. The painter wishes to mark the
preponderance of matter in the one class and of spirit in the other.

FERRARA[18]

BY THEOPHILE GAUTIER

Ferrara rises solitary in the midst of a flat country more rich than
picturesque. When one enters it by the broad street which leads to the
square, the aspect of the city is imposing and monumental. A palace with
a grand staircase occupies a corner of this vast square; it might be a
court-house or a town hall, for people of all classes were entering and
departing through its wide doors....

The castle of the ancient dukes of Ferrara, which is to be found a
little farther on, has a fine feudal aspect. It is a vast collection of
towers joined together by high walls crowned with a battlement forming
a cornice, and which emerge from a great moat full of water, over which
one enters by a protected bridge. The castle, built wholly of brick or
of stones reddened by the sun, has a vermilion tint which deprives it of
its imposing effect. It is too much like a decoration of a melodrama.

It was in this castle that the famous Lucretia Borgia lived, whom Victor
Hugo has made such a monster for us, and whom Ariosto depicts as a model
of chastity, grace and virtue; that blonde Lucretia who wrote letters
breathing the purest love, and some of whose hair, fine as silk and
shining as gold, Byron possest. It was there that the dramas of Tasso
and Ariosto and Guarini were played; there that those brilliant orgies
took place, mingled with poisonings and assassinations, which
characterized that learned and artistic, refined and criminal, period of
Italy.

It is the custom to pay a pious visit to the problematical dungeon in
which Tasso, mad with love and grief, passed so many years, according to
the poetic legend which grew up concerning his misfortune. We did not
have time to spare and we regretted it very little. This dungeon, a
perfectly correct sketch of which we have before our eyes, consists only
of four walls, ceiled by a low arch. At the back is to be seen a window
grated by heavy bars and a door with big bolts. It is quite unlikely
that in this obscure hole, tap