omething terribly more real. To men like the Marquis of Mantua war had
been a highly profitable game of skill; to men like the Marechal de Gie
it was a murderous horse-play; and this difference the Italians were not
slow to perceive. When they cast away their lances at Fornovo, and
fled--in spite of their superior numbers--never to return, one
fair-seeming sham of the fifteenth century became a vision of the past.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Charles claimed under the will of Rene of Anjou, who in turn claimed
under the will of Joan II.

BERGAMO AND BARTOLOMMEO COLLEONI.

From the new town of commerce to the old town of history upon the hill
the road is carried along a rampart lined with horse-chestnut
trees--clumps of massy foliage and snowy pyramids of bloom expanded in
the rapture of a Southern spring. Each pair of trees between their stems
and arch of intermingling leaves includes a space of plain checkered
with cloud-shadows, melting blue and green in amethystine haze. To right
and left the last spurs of the Alps descend, jutting like promontories,
heaving like islands from the misty breadth below; and here and there
are towers half lost in airy azure, and cities dwarfed to blots, and
silvery lines where rivers flow, and distant, vapor-drowned, dim crests
of Apennines. The city walls above us wave with snapdragons and iris
among fig-trees sprouting from the riven stones. There are terraces
over-rioted with pergolas of vine, and houses shooting forward into
balconies and balustrades, from which a Romeo might launch himself at
daybreak, warned by the lark's song. A sudden angle in the road is
turned, and we pass from air-space and freedom into the old town,
beneath walls of dark-brown masonry, where wild valerians light their
torches of red bloom in immemorial shade. Squalor and splendor live
here side by side. Grand Renaissance portals grinning with satyr masks
are flanked by tawdry frescos shamming stonework, or by doorways where
the withered bush hangs out a promise of bad wine.

The Cappella Colleoni is our destination--that masterpiece of the
sculptor-architect's craft, with its variegated marbles--rosy and white
and creamy yellow and jet-black--in patterns, bass-reliefs, pilasters,
statuettes, incrusted on the fanciful domed shrine. Upon the facade are
mingled, in the true Renaissance spirit of genial acceptance, motives
Christian and Pagan with supreme impartiality. Medallions of emperors
and gods alternate w