strange that to the young Marchesa di Pescara, Ischia had
become an enchanted island. The scene of her happy childhood, of her
studies, of her first efforts in lyric art, of her stately and
resplendent bridal; the home, too, of her early married life,--it is
little wonder that in after years she translated into song its scenic
loveliness and the thoughts and visions it had inspired.

Again, the ever-recurring war came on, and in the spring of 1512 the
King of Naples conferred the doubtful privilege on the Marchesa di
Pescara of serving as the royal representative. It is said that Vittoria
personally superintended her young husband's outfit,--in horses,
attendants, armor, and other details belonging to a gentleman of rank.
Her father and her uncle, Prospero Colonna, were also among the military
who led Italian troops. In the terrible battle of Ravenna (which was
fought on the Easter Sunday, April 11, of 1512), Pescara was wounded,
taken prisoner, and carried to the fortress of Porta Gobbia. A messenger
was sent to Ischia, where Vittoria lived between her books and the
orange groves; and the twentieth-century cynic of 1907 will smile at the
form in which she expressed her sorrow,--that of a poem of some forty
stanzas, which began:--

"_Eccelso Mio Signor! Questa ti scrivo
Per te narrar tra quante dubbie voglie,
Fra quanti aspri martir, dogliosa io vivo!_"

A translation of this lyric epistle, made in prose, gives it more fully
as follows:--

"Eccelso Mio Signor: I write this to thee to tell thee amid what
bitter anxieties I live.... I believed that so many prayers and
tears, and love without measure, would not have been displeasing to
God.... Thy great valor has shone as in a Hector or an Achilles."

In this letter Vittoria tells him that when the messenger reached her,
she was lying on a point of the island ("_I_, in the _body_, my _mind_
always with _thee_," she says), and that the whole atmosphere had been
to her that day "like a cavern of black fog," and that "the marine gods
seemed to say to Ischia, 'To-day, Vittoria, thou shalt hear of disgrace
from the confines: thou now in health and honor, thou shalt be turned
to grief; but thy father and husband are saved, though taken
prisoners.'"

This presentiment she related to her husband's aunt, the Duchessa
Francavilla, the Castellana of Ischia, who begged her not to think of it
and said, "It would be strange for such a force to be c