y's intercessions for mercy. After that, a heavy sadness
fell upon him, and he wandered aimlessly about in many Italian
cities, and at last married a second time, taking to wife Margherita
Malatesta. He was a prince of high and generous soul and of manly
greatness rare in his time. There came once a creature of the Visconti
to him, with a plot for secretly taking off his masters; but the
Gonzaga (he must have been thought an eccentric man by his neighbors)
dismissed the wretch with scornful horror. I am sure the reader will
be glad to know that he finally beat the Visconti in fair fight, and
(the pest still raging in Mantua) lived to make a pilgrimage to the
Holy Land. When he returned, he compiled the city's statutes, divided
the town into four districts, and named its streets. So he died.

And after this prince had made his end, there came another Francesco,
or Gianfrancesco, who was created Marquis of Mantua by the Emperor
Sigismund. He was a friend of war, and having been the ward of
the Venetian Republic (Venice was fond of this kind of trust, and
sometimes adopted princely persons as her children, among whom the
reader will of course remember the Queen of Cyprus, and the charming
Bianca Capello, whose personal attractions and singularly skillful
knowledge of the use of poisons made her Grand Duchess of Tuscany
some years after she eloped from Venice), he became the leader of
her armies on the death of Carmagnola, who survived the triumphal
reception given him by the Serenest Senate only a very short time. [It
seems scarcely worth while to state the fact that Carmagnola,
suspected of treasonable correspondence with the Visconti, was
recalled to Venice to receive distinguished honors from the republic.
The Senate was sitting in the hall of the Grand Council when he
appeared, and they detained him there with various compliments till
night fell. Then instead of lights, the Sbirri appeared, and seized
Carmagnola. "I am a dead man," he exclaimed, on beholding them. And
so indeed he was; for, three days after, he was led out of prison,
and beheaded between the pillars of the Piazzetta.] The Gonzaga
took Verona and Padua for the republic, and met the Milanese in many
battles. Venice was then fat and insolently profuse with the spoils
of the Orient, and it is probable that the Marquis of Mantua acquired
there that taste for splendor which he introduced into his hitherto
frugal little state. We read of his being in Venice i