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 conduct, there is still preserved at
Ferrara one of Ariosto's inkstands, which is ornamented with a little
bronze Cupid, finger upon lip in token of silence.

Early biographers and literary historians were inclined to give to
Ginevra Lapi all credit for the more serious inspiration which prompted
him to write the major part of his amatory verse, and so careful had he
been to conceal the facts that it was not until many years after his
death that his marriage to Alessandra Strozzi was generally known.
Ariosto had been on a visit to Rome in the year 1515, and, on his
return, he chanced to stop at Florence, where he intended to spend three
or four days during the grand festival which was being held in honor of
Saint John the Baptist. Arriving just in time to be present at some
social function of importance, the poet there saw for the first time
this lady who was to mean so much to him for all the rest of his life.
It will be remembered that when Lorenzo de' Medici first met Lucrezia
Donati he had been taken to some evening company, much against his
will. In the present instance, it was the lady who showed
disinclination to go into society, and her recent widowhood gave her
good reason for her feeling in the matter; but, won over by the
entreaties of her friends, _da preghi vinta_, she finally consented to
go. What she wore and how she looked, and how she bore herself, and much
more, do we know from Ariosto's glowing lines which were written in
commemoration of this event. Her gown was of black, all embroidered with
bunches of grapes and grape leaves in purple and gold. Her luxuriant
blond hair, the _richissima capellatura bionda_, was gathered in a net
b