y, for their
part, asked for pity or got it. Mostly they paid their tavern bills when
the last cup had been drained and the last chorus led. When Ezzelin was
master of the revels they paid in blood: that tower of his by the river
is dark with it yet. Petrarch from his mountain-vineyard at Arqua tipped
them a brighter stave: they broke their hearts for pretty women and had
every one the comfort of a swanlike end, since sonnets are a knack. With
Antony they flagellated, with Carrara defended walls, with Gattemelata
knocked them down. Then Venice took what Padua could never keep; the
Euganeans hailed on either side the Lion of Saint Mark; the Arts
flourished; Squarcione cut out small-clothes and taught anatomy none the
worse; Mantegna dreamed of Julius Caesar, smouldering while he dreamed;
and Ippolita, the stone-mason's daughter, from too much courting fled in
breeches to the hills. She, like all the Padovani, paid her score
without flinching. It may have been run up without leave asked, but it
was run up in her name. The rule in Padua was so; I never heard that she
repined. Maybe that she had her money's worth; but of that you will be
able to judge as well as I.

Padua is a city set in meadows full of light; it is well spaced,
plentifully watered, arcaded, green with gardens. The streets are like
cloister-walks; as in Lucca, the plane is the sacred tree, and next to
that flag of green on a silver staff, the poplar shows the city blushful
in the spring and thrilling all a summer with the memory. It is a place
of brick and marble, painted orange, brown, yellow, and warm white,
where every cornerstone and every twig is printed sharply on a sky of
morning blue.

"Quivi le mura son fatte con arte,
Che parlano, e rispondono a i parlanti."

A tale of Padua should have the edge of a cut gem. So let Ippolita's be
told.

In her day--that day when, at sixteen years old or so, the sun briefly
lit upon her golden head and showed her for the lovely girl she
was--Padua was passing through a time of peace. Novello was dead at
last, poor heroic gentleman, Verona was shaken off; Venice was
supreme--easy, but unquestionably mistress of the Emilia. There was time
to make madrigals, to make eyes, to make love, to imagine portraits.
Mantegna was painting giants in the Eremitani and Bellini picking his
brains, but not as yet a quarrel. The classics, the ingenuous arts,
lovely woman--always interwoven when times are happiest-