[1003] See above p. 394, and note 1.
[1004] As instance, Bandello, part i. nov. 4.
[1005] ‘Piaccia al Signore Iddio che non si ritrovi,’ say the women in Giraldi (iii. nov. 10), when they are told that the deed may cost the murderer his head.
[1006] This is the case, for example, with Gioviano Pontano (De Fortitudine, l. ii.). His heroic Ascolans, who spend their last night in singing and dancing, the Abruzzian mother, who cheers up her son on his way to the gallows, &c., belong probably to brigand families, but he forgets to say so.
[1007] Diarium Parmense, in Murat. xxii. col. 330 to 349 passim. The sonnet, col. 340.
[1008] Diario Ferrarese, in Murat. xxiv. col. 312. We are reminded of the gang led by a priest, which for some time before the year 1837 infested western Lombardy.
[1009] Massuccio, nov. 29. As a matter of course, the man has luck in his amours.
[1010] If he appeared as a corsair in the war between the two lines of Anjou for the possession of Naples, he may have done so as a political partisan, and this, according to the notions of the time, implied no dishonour. The Archbishop Paolo Fregoso of Genoa, in the second half of the fifteenth century probably allowed himself quite as much freedom, or more. Contemporaries and later writers, e.g. Aretino and Poggio, record much worse things of John. Gregorovius, vi. p. 600.
[1011] Poggio, Facetiae, fol. 164. Anyone familiar with Naples at the present time, may have heard things as comical, though bearing on other sides of human life.
[1012] Jovian. Pontani Antonius: ‘Nec est quod Neapoli quam hominis vita minoris vendatur.’ It is true he thinks it was not so under the House of Anjou, ‘sicam ab iis (the Aragonese) accepimus.’ The state of things about the year 1534 is described by Benvenuto Cellini, i. 70.