arles V was to be celebrated at Aix-la-Chapelle
the Marchese di Pescara was appointed ambassador to represent the House
of Aragon on this brilliant occasion, when the new emperor was to be
invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had
decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an
arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept
Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes
of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the
play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which
occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of
Thomas a Becket." One historian thus describes this scene:--

"The two handsome young sovereigns rode into Canterbury under the
same canopy, the great Cardinal riding directly in front of them,
and on the right and left were the proud nobles of Spain and
England, among whom was Pescara. The kings alighted from their
horses at the west door of the cathedral and together paid their
devotions before that rich shrine blazing with jewels. They humbly
knelt on the steps worn by the knees of tens of thousands of
pilgrims."

On the return to Naples of the Marchese di Pescara he told the story of
his regal journey to an assemblage of nobles in the Church of Santa
Maria di Monte Oliveto, and he then joined the Marchesa in Rome, where
she had gone to visit her family and to pay her devotions to Leo X, who
had just created Pompeo Colonna a cardinal.

Pope Leo aspired to draw around him a court distinguished for its
culture and brilliancy in both art and literature. In this court the
Marchesa di Pescara shone resplendent. "She was at the height of her
beauty, and her charms were sung by the poets of the day," says a
contemporary.

A year later Leo X died, succeeded by Adrian (who had been tutor to
Charles V), to the intense and bitter disappointment of Cardinal Wolsey,
who had made the widest--and wiliest--efforts to gratify his own
ambition of reigning in the Papal chair. Again the war between France
and Italy, that which seemed to be a perpetually smouldering feud, and
the Marchese di Pescara, again summoned to battle, was wounded at Pavia.
For some time he lay between life and death at Milan, and a messenger
was sent to beg Vittoria to come to him. She set out on this journey,
leaving Naples in great haste; but on reaching V