[483] Vergerio may have communicated the eighteen stanzas to Aretino; or conversely he may have received them from him. I have read through the letters exchanged between him and Aretino—and they are numerous—without, however, finding any passage that throws light on this transaction. Aretino published both series of letters. He had therefore opportunity to suppress inconvenient allusions.

[484] We may note the dates and fates of the chief actors in this tragedy. Broccardo died of grief in 1531. Berni died, under suspicion of poison, in 1535. Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici was poisoned a few months later, in 1535. Alessandro de' Medici was murdered by Lorenzino in 1537. Pietro Paolo Vergerio was deprived of his see and accused of heresy in 1544. Berni's old friend, the author of Il Forno, M. La Casa, conducted his trial, as Papal Nuncio at Venice. Aretino, who had assumed the part of inquisitor and mutilator to gratify his private spite, survived triumphant.

[485] See the Raccolta di Poesie Satiriche, Milano, 1808.

[486] See, for the latter series, Poesie Satiriche, pp. 138-156.

[487] See Sonetti di Matteo Franco e di Luigi Pulci, 1759. Cp. above, [Part i. p. 431].

[488] The best source of information regarding Pietro Aretino is his own correspondence published in six volumes (Paris, 1609), and the two volumes of letters written to him by eminent personages, which are indeed a rich mine of details regarding Italian society and manners in the sixteenth century. Mazzuchelli's Vita di Pietro Aretino (Padua, 1741) is a conscientious, sober, and laborious piece of work, on which all subsequent notices have been based.

[489] It may be mentioned that Ariosto has immortalized this bully in the Orlando (xlvi. 14), among the most illustrious men and women of his age:

ecco il flagello
De' principi, il divin Pietro Aretino.

[490] Aretino's comedies, letters, and occasional poems are our best sources for acquaintance with the actual conditions of palace-life. The Dialogo de le Corti opens with a truly terrible description of the debauchery and degradation to which a youth was exposed on his first entrance into the service of a Roman noble. It may have been drawn from the author's own experience. The nauseous picture of the tinello, or upper-servants' hall, which occurs in the comedy Cortigiana (act v. sc. 15), proves intimate familiarity with the most revolting details of domestic drudgery. The dirt of these places made an ineffaceable impression on Aretino's memory. In his burlesque Orlandino, when he wishes to call up a disgusting image, he writes:

Odorava la sala come odora
Un gran tinel d'un Monsignor Francese,
O come quel d'un Cardinal ancora
Quando Febo riscalda un bestial mese.