A very hard struggle had Alphonso to hold his own against all the spiritual and carnal weapons of the Church. It must be admitted, that the latter seem to have troubled him by far the most. And more than once it appeared as if he must have been overwhelmed by the superiority of the force against him. But partly by his own military talents, partly by the aid of the French, and partly by good fortune, he won through, till the death of Julius allowed him, and the rest of the world, a short breathing time of repose.
Not that his difficulties with Mother Church were at an end. Leo X., though as mild a mannered Pope as ever launched a curse, had no intention of abandoning all the Church's claims on a vassal in disgrace. He relieved him from the excommunication, and permitted him to hold Ferrara, but still maintained a claim on Modena, and made good his hold on that city.
LUCREZIA'S LATTER DAYS.
In 1519, Alphonso lost, and as it would seem, bitterly regretted, his wife Lucrezia. "Her husband and his subjects," writes Frizzi,[32] "all loved her for her gracious manners and for her piety, to which," as Giovio says, "having long before abandoned all worldly vanities, she wholly dedicated herself. She used to spend the morning in prayer; and in the evening, would invite the ladies of Ferrara to embroidery–working parties, in which accomplishment she greatly excelled. Her liberality to the poor, and to men of letters, which generally means one and the same thing," says Frizzi, "was especially notable."
Clement VII., if not so terrible an adversary as Julius II., was one quite as difficult to deal with. Promises made only to delude, negotiations entered on with no intention that they should lead to anything, treaties made only to be broken, a dexterous playing off of one potentate against another,—these were the arts by which Clement sought to steer his devious and trimming course among the difficulties of the time; and which at last landed him a prisoner in his own fortress of St. Angelo, while his and the world's capital was being sacked beneath his eyes. In this predicament Clement had by his duly authorised representative, Cardinal Cibo, in consideration of Alphonso's joining the French King in a league against the Emperor, conceded all the points in dispute between them. The investiture of Ferrara was to be renewed and confirmed; all claim of the Apostolic See to Modena, Reggio, &c., was to be abandoned; Ippolito the Duke's second son was to have a Cardinal's hat and the bishopric of Modena; and Alphonso was to make as much salt at Comacchio as he pleased.
But hardly was the treaty signed before the Pope escaped from St. Angelo to Orvieto, and thereupon unblushingly refused to perform any one of the promises made. And Alphonso, who had incurred great risk of the Emperor's displeasure by performing his share of the bargain, had to turn about with all possible speed, break with the King of France, and hope by humble excuses to be able to make it up again with Charles.
Thus in Ferrara, as indeed throughout Italy, things were very different from what they had been during the latter half of the fifteenth century. Men might with some show of reason talk of the good old times, and look out on those around them with misgiving and despondency. And yet the Phœnix was burning herself as usual; only, as must be admitted, with more than ordinary amount of pestilential stench and stifling smoke,—smoke so stifling, so pestilential, that but few of those, who had to draw their life–breath, as best they might, in the midst of it, attained to any remotest guess that all this so sulphureous smother, and confused darkness of the air, was in truth but caused by that Phœnix burning, and preparatory for a purer atmosphere when it was accomplished. Few in any age can gain such Pisgah–glimpse of the coming time; fewest in that of which this writing treats.
THE WORLD IN HER DAY.
But of those few our Olympia, as it is hoped the reader will see reason to believe, was one. Yet that terrible burning time,—such a Phœnix burning as the world has once and once only seen since—was but on the eve of beginning in the scene on which Olympia had to appear, at the time of her appearance. Her mortal career had to be passed in the midst of the very densest smoke–clouds of the funeral pyre.