But one evening when the sun was sinking low behind the Appennines, filling the valleys with a sea of rosy mists, from which the fantastic rocks of San Marino and San Leo emerged far away to the right, and the great head of Monte Catria, Dante's asylum, to the left, Gigi crept from his hiding-place behind a bramble bush and came to stand beside the Philosopher. It was the 20th of September, the anniversary of United Italy, and all the other children had long ago fled laughing to the piazza where the police band was to celebrate the festive occasion with music. But Gigi, with his golden head thrust forward and his little arms behind his back, stood rapt in wonder before the glory of the sun. We watched them stand together, those two, both worshippers in their unconscious pose, both dreamers, till Gigi, proud and silent Gigi, who would neither smile nor beg, stretched out his hand and took the Philosopher's in silent sympathy. So they stood linked together, man and child, inarticulate before the glory of earth and sky, until night began to hang her purple veils along the valleys and Venus was shining softly in the West.
'Among other laudable actions Federigo erected on the rugged heights of Urbino a residence, by many regarded as the most beautiful in all Italy, and so amply did he provide it with every convenience that it appeared rather a palatial city than a palace.'
So spake that courtly gentleman Baldassare Castiglione, friend of Raphael, honoured guest in Guidobaldo's brilliant assembly, and ambassador from Urbino to the English Court in 1503, when Henry VII. of England invested the Duke with the Order of the Garter as his father Frederic, the most distinguished soldier of his day, had been invested by Edward IV. And seen by moonlight, as we climbed Urbino's hill, it was a fairy palace, with towers and loggias soaring up to the stars above dark ilex groves, once gardens where the lovely ladies of Elisabetta's court dallied with love.
Urbino: San Francesco.
But if you wish to carry with you unimpaired this vision of ethereal loveliness it is wiser to let your imagination, and the flowery epithets of Castiglione, Sanzio, Baldi and Vasari, fill up the blanks, nor seek to find inspiration in the deserted halls of Federigo. Come rather, across the cleft in Urbino's hill, and climb towards the height of the Fortezza. There you will see a panorama of great hills unfold itself, Monte Catria and lovely Monte del Cavallo, Monte Nerone and Carpegna, the cradle of the Montefeltrian race. At your feet across the brown roofs of the Città Inferiore you will see the mighty walls and bastions of Urbino encircling Federigo's palace, with the dome-crowned bulk of the Cathedral on the one hand and a gracious ilex-wood upon the other; and in the midst, enshrined as it were in the panoply of war, a pleasure-house for princes, white and gold, with airy loggias opening out towards the mountains, and hanging gardens and slim tourelles, like a mediaeval castle of the Troubadour land. For the spirit of the Renaissance was in Urbino when Frederic and his Dalmatian architect Laurana built this palace. Though Italy was still racked by civil wars, though she was yet to tremble before the foreign armies, which poured through her defenceless passes from the day that Charles VIII's. mad escapade showed that the way was open, to the invasion of Napoleon in 1796, Federigo the man of war and letters chose to build a pleasure palace for himself and his descendants upon Urbino's hill.
No one else but Federigo would have dared. The Sforza trembled in the fortress they had wrested from the Visconti in the heart of Milan; many years later the Medici had need of a covered passage connecting the Pitti with the Palazzo Vecchio, as the Popes had, to cover their retreat from the Vatican to Sant'Angelo; the palace of the Dukes of Ferrara was armed at every point; even the courtly Lords of Mantua could flee at a moment's notice from their exquisite summer-house outside the city gates to their stronghold in the Castello Gonzaga. But it is not likely that Federigo, the great soldier who had led the armies of kings and Popes to victory, and whose fame had crossed the Alps and earned him laurels in the far-off Court of England, depended only on the strength of his mountain home or the loyalty of the sturdy citizens of Urbino, when he planned the first unfortified mansion which an Italian dared to build since the Villas of the Roman Empire were destroyed by the barbarian. He knew well enough that they could be trusted. Had he not left his beloved Countess Battista to their care while he was carrying on his wars in Tuscany and the Campagna, although his life-long enemy, Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini, was harrying his borders and seeking to inflame his people to revolt?