But neither on this occasion was he destined to find the tranquillity which he seemed fated never to attain! And this time the break-up was a greater and more final one than the last. Duke Alphonso died in 1597; and the Pontificial Court, which had long had its eye on the possibility of enforcing certain pretended claims to the Duchy of Ferrara, found the means at Alphonso's death of ousting his successor the Duke Cesare, who remained thenceforward Duke of Modena only, but no longer of Ferrara.
Guarini was once more adrift! Nor were the political changes in Ferrara the only thing which rendered the place no longer a home for him. Other misfortunes combined to render a residence in the city odious to him. His daughter Anna had married a noble gentleman of Ferrara, the Count Ercole Trotti, by whom she was on the 3rd of May, 1598, murdered at his villa of Zanzalino near Ferrara. Some attempt was made to assert that the husband had reason to suspect that his wife was plotting against his life. But there seems to have been no foundation for any accusation of the sort; and the crime was prompted probably by jealousy. Guarini, always on bad terms with his sons, and constantly involved in litigation with them, as he had been with his father, was exceedingly attached to this unfortunate daughter.
But even this terrible loss was not the only bitterness which resulted from this crime. Guarini composed a long Latin epitaph, in which he strongly affirms her absolute innocence of everything that had been laid to her charge, and speaks with reprobation of the husband's[57] crime. But scarcely had the stone bearing the inscription been erected than the indignant father was required by the authorities of the city to remove it. A declaration, which he published on the subject, dated June 15, 1598, is still extant. "On that day," he writes, "the Vice-legate of Ferrara spoke with me, in the name of the Holy Father, as to the removing of the epitaph written by me on Anna my daughter in the church of Sta. Catherina. He said that there were things in it that might provoke other persons to resentment, and occasion much scandal; and that, besides that, there were in the inscription words of Sacred Scripture, which ought not to be used in such a place. I defended my cause, and transmitted a memorial to his Holiness, having good reason to know that these objections were the mere malignity of those who favour the opposite party, and of those who caused the death of my innocent child. But at last, on the 22nd, I caused the epitaph to be removed, intimating that it was my intention to take up the body, and inter it elsewhere. On which it is worthy of remark, that having made my demand to that effect, I was forbidden to do so." He further adds: "Note! news was brought to me here that my son Girolamo, who was evidently discovered to be the accomplice, and principal atrocious author of the death of his sister Anna, received from the Potesta of Rovigo licence to come into the Polisina with twelve men armed with arquebuses."
All this is very sad; and whether these terrible suspicions may or may not have had any foundation other than the envenomed temper generated by the family litigations, it must equally have had the effect of making the life of Guarini a very miserable one, and contributing to his determination to abandon finally his native city.
More surprising is it that, after so many disgusts and disappointments, he should once again have been tempted to seek, what he had never yet been able to find there, in a court. In a letter written in November, 1598, he informs the Duke Cesare (Duke of Modena, though no longer of Ferrara) that the Grand Duke of Florence had offered him a position at Florence. And his Serene Highness, more kindly and forgiving than the late Duke, wrote him an obliging and congratulatory letter in the following month.
At Florence everything at first seemed to be going well with him, and he seemed to stand high in favour with the Grand Duke Ferdinand. But very shortly he quitted Florence in anger and disgust on the discovery of the secret marriage of his third son, Guarini, with a woman of low condition at Pisa, with at least the connivance, as the poet thought, whether justly or not there is nothing to show, of the Grand Duke.
After that his old friend the Duchess of Urbino once again stood his friend, and he obtained a position in the court of Urbino, then one of the most widely famed centres of cultivation and letters in Italy. And for a while everything seemed at last to be well with him there. On the 23rd of February, 1603, he writes to his sister, who apparently had been pressing him to come home to Ferrara:—"I should like to come home, my sister. I have great need and a great desire for home; but I am treated so well here, and with so much distinction and so much kindness, that I cannot come. I must tell you that all expenses for myself and my servants are supplied, so that I have not to spend a farthing for anything in the world that I need. The orders are that anything I ask for should be furnished to me. Besides all which, they give me three hundred crowns a year; so that, what with money and expenses, the position is worth six hundred crowns a year to me. You may judge, then, if I can throw it up. May God grant you every happiness!
Your brother,
B. Guarini."
But all would not do. He had been but a very little time in this little Umbrian Athens among the Apennines before he once again threw up his position in anger and disgust, because he did not obtain all the marks of distinction to which he thought that he was entitled. This was in 1603. He was now sixty-six, and seems at length to have made no further attempt to haunt at court. Once again he was at Rome in 1605, having undertaken, at the request of the citizens of Ferrara, to carry their felicitations to the new Pope, Paul the Fifth. And with the exception of that short expedition his last years were spent in the retirement of his ancestral estate of Guarina.
The property is situated in the district of Lendinara, on the fat and fertile low-lying region between Rovigo and Padua, and belongs to the commune—parish, as we should say—of St. Bellino. The house, dating probably from the latter part of the fifteenth century, is not much more than a hundred yards or so from the piazza of the village, which boasts two thousand inhabitants. The road between the two is bordered with trees. The whole district is as flat as a billiard table, and as prosaical in its well-to-do fertility as can be imagined. It is intersected by a variety of streams, natural and artificial. About a couple of miles from the house to the south is the Canalbianco; and a little farther to the north the Adigetto. To the east runs the Scortico. St. Bellino, from whom the village is named, was, it seems, enrolled among the martyrs by Pope Eugenius the Third in 1152. He has a great specialty for curing the bite of mad dogs. There is a grand cenotaph in his honour in the village church, which was raised by some of the Guarini family. But this, too, like all else, became a subject of trouble and litigation to our poet. A certain Baldassare Bonifaccio of Rovigo wanted to transport the saint to that city. Guarini would not hear of this; litigated the matter before the tribunals of Venice, and prevailed. So the saint still resides at St. Bellino to the comfort of all those bitten by mad dogs in those parts. The house and estate have passed through several hands since that time; but a number of old family portraits may still be seen on the walls, together with the family arms, and the motto, "Fortis est in asperis non turbari." The armchair and writing table of the poet are also still preserved in the house, and a fig-tree is pointed out close by it, under the shade of which the poet, as tradition tells, wrote on that table and in that chair his "Pastor Fido." There is an inscription on the chair as follows: "Guarin sedendo qui canto, che vale al paragon seggio reale."[58]