Paris dance upon the smooth pavements on the
night of the national holiday, the Quatorze Juillet, will possess at
least a faint idea of what it must have been. That all classes of the
population were cared for at this great festival is proved by the fact
that one hundred kegs of wine were consumed daily, and that five
thousand pounds of sweetmeats and candies were distributed among the
people.

The marriage of the poet Ariosto with the beautiful Alessandra Strozzi,
widow of Tito Strozzi, a noble Florentine who was famed in his day for
his Latin poetry, was not concluded with any such display and
magnificence, the author of the _Orlando Furioso_ being in no position
which made it necessary for him to entertain the whole population, and
having ideas all his own regarding the advantage of publicity in such
matters. Long before Ariosto's marriage, however, in the days of his
youth and before he had ever set eyes upon the Titian-haired Alessandra,
he fell captive to the charms of Ginevra Lapi, a young girl of
Florentine family, who lived at or near Mantua. He met her first at a
_festa di ballo_, we are told, and there he was much impressed with her
grace and beauty, for she seemed like a young goddess among her less
favored companions. Then began that attachment which lasted for long
years and which seems to have inspired much of his earlier lyric poetry.
Four years after their first meeting he writes that she was "dearer to
him than his own soul and fairer than ever in his eyes," and she seems
to have made a very strong impression upon his mind, as he mentions her
long afterward with most genuine tenderness. What more than this may be
said of Ginevra Lapi has not yet come to light, and it is due to the
poet alone that her name has been handed down to posterity. If Ariosto
had been an expansive and communicative man, we might know far more than
we do of Ginevra and of the other friends of his youth, for he was a
person of most impressionable nature, who was very susceptible to the
allurements of beautiful women, and there is no doubt of the fact that
he had a certain compelling charm which made him almost irresistible
with the ladies of his _entourage_. However, the history of his affairs
of the heart has baffled all investigators as yet, because the poet,
from the very earliest days of his youth, made it a rule never to boast
of his conquests or to speak of his friends in any public way. As a
symbol of this gallant rule of