taken
no fervent part in the persecutions. "The proceedings," says Cantu,
writing before slavery had been abolished, "were marked by those
punishments which free America inflicts upon the negroes to-day,
and which a high conception of the mission of the Church moves us
to deplore." The Duke must have made haste after this to reconcile
himself with the Church; for we read that two years later he was
permitted to take a particle of the blood of Christ from the church of
St. Andrea to that of Sta. Barbara, where he deposited it in a box of
crystal and gold, and caused his statue to be placed before the shrine
in the act of adoring the relic.

Duke William managed his finances so well as to leave his spendthrift
son Vincenzo a large sum of money to make away with after his death.
Part of this, indeed, he had earned by obedience to his father's
wishes in the article of matrimony. The prince was in love with the
niece of the Duke of Bavaria, very lovely and certainly high-born
enough, but having unhappily only sixty thousand crowns to her
portion. So she was not to be thought of, and Vincenzo married the
sister of the Duke of Parma, of whom he grew so fond, that, though
two years of marriage brought them no children, he could scarce
be persuaded to suffer her divorce on account of sterility. This
happened, however, and the prince's affections were next engaged by
the daughter of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. The lady had a portion
of three hundred thousand crowns, which entirely charmed the
frugal-minded Duke William, and Vincenzo married her, after certain
diplomatic preliminaries demanded by the circumstances, which scarcely
bear statement in English, and which the present history would blush
to give even in Italian.

Indeed, he was a great beast, this splendid Vincenzo, both by his own
fault and that of others; but it ought to be remembered of him, that
at his solicitation the most clement lord of Ferrara liberated from
durance in the hospital of St. Anna his poet Tasso, whom he had kept
shut in that mad-house seven years. On his delivery, Tasso addressed
his "Discorso" to Vincenzo's kinsman, the learned Cardinal Scipio
Gonzaga; and to this prelate he submitted for correction the
"Gerusalemme," as did Guarini his "Pastor Fido."

When Vincenzo came to power he found a fat treasury, which he enjoyed
after the fashion of the time, and which, having a princely passion
for every costly pleasure, he soon emptied. He was crowne