CHAPTER III.
"ALL'S WELL, THAT ENDS WELL."
One of two alternatives only, according to the well–known dictum of a judicious French philosopher, could be adopted by any Aspasia or other "charming woman" whatsoever, when brought to that pass. She must either take to cards, or "enter into devotion." Such would seem, according to the authority alluded to, to be the law of nature, which rules the destinies of charming women whose charms have gone from them. Tullia appears to have chosen the latter alternative, and established herself permanently at Florence under the special protection of the pious Duchess Eleonora di Toledo.
The times were changed, too, in Italy, since the days of Tullia's youth. Life in Rome, and hence in a somewhat less degree also in the other centres of the peninsula, was very different under Popes Paul IV. and Pius IV., from what it had been under Leo X., Clement VII., or Paul III. Devotion was now the mode, especially in courts. Princes had begun to understand, that the cause of despotism was bound up with that of sacerdotal tyranny; and that reform in matters ecclesiastical went hand in hand with freedom in matters secular. Popes and kings had become aware, that their fight against mankind could only be carried on successfully by strict offensive and defensive alliance. Hence orthodox piety was one of the surest roads to court favour. And thus considerations of all sorts united in pointing out to Tullia the expediency of quitting La Bohème, and becoming at once a respectable member of society, and a pattern of propriety.
Literature, however, of a courtly sort was held in much favour at the court of Cosmo, who founded academies and kept historians in his pay, to set him and his doings before posterity in a proper point of view. Tullia, therefore, in quitting the "pays de la Bohème," did not leave her muse behind her. On the contrary, her most important work was the production of this period of her life.
"Guerrino il Meschino" is a poem consisting of some thirty thousand lines, in thirty–six cantos of octave rhyme. The poetess states in her preface, that it is a versification of a Spanish original; an assertion which has given some trouble to bibliographers; for the story of Guerrino was popular in Italian prose long before the time of Tullia, and has indeed continued so, quite independently of her poetical version, to such a degree as to have afforded the subject of popular dramatic representation within the present century. Some importance has been attached to the question of its origin from the circumstance of its having been supposed to have suggested to Dante some part of the plan of his poem.
GUERRINO IL MESCHINO.
In an article on Dantescan literature, by M. Charles Labitte, in the 31st vol. of the second series of the Révue des Deux Mondes, he says, that "it has been maintained that Dante took directly from the old romance of 'Guerrino il Meschino' the subject and the entire plan of his work. The date and the origin of the Guerrino, whether French or Provençal, are uncertain.... Hell is represented in it with the concentric form attributed to it by Dante, and Satan in both cases occupies the lowest part of the abyss. But it would be easy to show, despite the weighty authority of Pelli and of Fontanini, that the romance of Guerrino, so popular in the fifteenth century, is at least in its present form posterior to the Divine Comedy."