Charles had promised to meet him at Busseto; and the old Pope had travelled as far as Parma towards the place of meeting. But the Emperor kept him waiting there in vain, remaining himself the while in Genoa.
TIME'S REVENGES.
Very near the spot, where the octogenarian Pope was, in the depth of winter, awaiting the pleasure of the Emperor, there had taken place, some five hundred years before, another meeting between an Emperor and a Pope, of which the circumstances had been somewhat different. And it may be supposed that the vicinity of that world–famous Canossa castle can hardly have failed to suggest some very disagreeable comparisons to the mind of the pontiff. Then it had been the Emperor, who had waited the good pleasure of the priest, standing there for three days' space bareheaded among the snow. Those were the good old days, eh, your Holiness! But then, that grand old Hildebrand, you see, really did think and believe, without any manner of doubt, that he absolutely was God's vicar on earth;—in some sense, indeed, truly was so. And that makes all the difference in the matter. Whereas your Holiness, in this sixteenth century, you know, between ourselves ... must put the best face you can upon the matter, swallow your indignation as best you may, and turn your face homewards.
Pope Paul did so; and determined on returning to Bologna by way of Ferrara, very much to the annoyance of Duke Hercules.[64] It was not that there was not plenty of business to be transacted between the Pope and the Duke. But the successor of St. Peter travelled in a manner that made the honour of being his host a very serious consideration. Duke Hercules was much given to splendid hospitality, was fond, generally, of magnificence, and of occasions for display. But he had already borne the entire expense of the Pope's passage through Modena on his way northwards, and was not anxious to do the honours of his capital to such a visitor on such a scale as he felt he must do them, if they were to be done at all.
In the first place "Servus servorum" travelled with a suite of three thousand persons, among whom were eighteen cardinals, forty bishops, and a whole posse of ambassadors and princes. He brought with him fourteen hundred horses, which seem few enough to drag and carry all these ecclesiastical dignitaries and their followers over the roads of Italy as they then were. Then festivals, gala doings temporal and spiritual, spectacles and celebrations of all sorts must be provided, and cash disbursed on all sides. A magnificent state barge,—a bucentaur, as the chroniclers call it, such as that in which the Venetian doge went out to wed the Adriatic—was sent up the Po to the nearest point to Parma, together with a whole fleet of other boats to bring the Pope and his enormous following down the river.
The famous villa of Belvidere was to be the Pope's resting place the first night after entering the Duke's territories. This was a pleasure–palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, built on an island in the Po, which was entirely occupied by it and the superb gardens attached to it. The recorders of the Ferrarese magnificences are never tired of describing the splendours of Belvidere, its marble quays and stairs from the water's edge, its courts, its fountains (which necessarily, as Frizzi remarks, must have been worked by machinery), its walls, glowing with the frescoes of the best masters of the Ferrara school, and, above all, its enchanting—if not, as Tasso describes them, enchanted—gardens. For these ducal pleasure–grounds furnished, it is said, the model whence the poet drew his well–known description of the gardens of Armida.
PERFORMANCE OF TERENCE.
The next day there is the usual ceremony of the state entry into the city. The cannon fire, and the bells ring; the crown prince Alphonso, with an hundred youths, chiefly of the students of the University, bring the keys of the city in a golden basin to the feet of his Holiness, who kisses the prince on the forehead. Then he has to hear an oration, then to be carried in a chair on men's shoulders all round the city, blessing all the way, till his arm is ready to drop off, then to "attend service" at the Cathedral—(adorned for the occasion by four pieces of arras belonging to the Duke, valued at sixty thousand crowns, some three hundred thousand pounds sterling, at least, of our present money!)—then to hear more orations; and then, it is to be hoped, to be put to bed. For in truth, for an octogenarian Servus servorum, such a day's work must have been harder than that of most of his masters.