ure of
the Gonzaga family, and the real respect and admiration entertained for
the poet's genius by the greatest men of the time, in spite of the rebuke
it had received from Alfonso, that there had been a confederacy to mock
and mystify him, after the fashion of the duke and duchess with Don
Quixote (the only blot, by the way, in the book of Cervantes; if, indeed,
he did not intend it as a satire on the mystifiers).

For a while, in short, the liberated prisoner thought himself happy.
He corrected his prose works, resumed and finished the tragedy of
_Torrismond_, which he had begun some years before, corresponded with
princes, and completed and published a narrative poem left unfinished by
his father. Torquato was as loving a son as Mozart or Montaigne. Whenever
he had a glimpse of felicity, he appears to have associated the idea of
it with that of his father. In the conclusion of his fragment, "O del
grand' Apennino," he affectingly begs pardon of his blessed spirit for
troubling him with his earthly griefs.[28]

But, alas, what had been an indulgence of self-esteem had now become the
habit of a disease; and in the course of a few months the restless poet
began to make his old discovery, that he was not sufficiently cared for.
The prince had no leisure to attend to him; the nobility did not "yield
him the first place," or at least (he adds) they did not allow him to be
treated "externally as their equal;" and he candidly confessed that he
could not live in a place where such was the custom.[29] He felt also,
naturally enough, however well it might have been intended, that it was
not pleasant to be confined to the range of the city of Mantua, attended
by a servant, even though he confessed that he was now subject to
"frenzy." He contrived to stay another half-year by help of a brilliant
carnival and of the select society of the prince's court, who were
evidently most kind to him; but at the end of the twelvemonth he was in
Bergamo among his relations. The prince gave him leave to go; and the
Cavaliere Tasso, his kinsman, sent his chariot on purpose to fetch him.

Here again he found himself at a beautiful country-seat, which the family
of Tasso still possesses near that city; and here again, in the house of
his father, he proposed to be happy, "having never desired," he says,
"any journey more earnestly than this." He left it in the course of a
month, to return to Mantua.

And it was only to wander still. Mantua he q