asserino, wounded to death under the great
Gothic archway of the palace, as he retreated, dropped from his
languid hands the bridle-rein of his charger and the reins of that
government with which he had so long galled Mantua. The unhappy
Francesco fled to the cathedral for protection; but the Gonzagas slew
him at the foot of the altar, with tortures so hideous and incredible,
that I am glad to have our friend, the advocate Arrighi, deny the fact
altogether. Passerino's brother, a bishop, was flung into a tower to
starve, that the Picos might be avenged; and the city of Mantua was
liberated.

In that day, when you freed a city from a tyrant, you gave it up to be
pillaged by the army of liberation; and Mantua was now sacked by
her deliverers. Can Grande's share of the booty alone amounted to a
hundred thousand gold florins (about two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars). The Mantuans, far from imitating the ungrateful Paduans,
who, when the Crusaders liberated them from Eccelino, grudged these
brave fellows three days' pillage of their city, and even wished back
their old tyrant,--the Mantuans, we say, seemed not in the least
to mind being devoured, but gratefully elected the Gonzaga their
captain-general, and purchased him absolution from the Pope for his
crimes committed in the sack. They got this absolution for twenty
thousand gold florins; and the Pope probably sold it cheap,
remembering his old grudge against the Bonacolsi, whom the Gonzaga had
overthrown. All this was in the year of grace 1328.

I confess that I am never weary of reading of these good, heroic,
virtuous old times in Italy, and that I am here tempted to digress
into declamation about them. There is no study more curious and
interesting, and I am fond of tracing the two elements of character
visible in Italian society, and every individual Italian, as they flow
down from the remotest times to these: the one element, that capacity
for intellectual culture of the highest degree; the other element,
that utter untamableness of passion and feeling. The presence of these
contradictory elements seems to influence every relation of Italian
life;--to make it capable of splendor, but barren of comfort; to
endear beauty, but not goodness, to the Italian; to lead him to
recognize and celebrate virtues, but not to practice them; to produce
a civilization of the mind, and not of the soul.

When Luigi Gonzaga was made lord of Mantua, he left his castle beyond
Po,