Stories from the Italian Poets: with Lives of the Writers, Volume 2 · Chapter 20Tasso: (1)
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Critical Notice of his Life and Genius.
Critical Notice
The romantic poetry of Italy having risen to its highest and apparently its most lawless pitch in the Orlando Furioso, a reaction took place in the next age in the Jerusalem Delivered.It did not hurt, however, the popularity of Ariosto. It only increased the number of poetic readers; and under the auspices, or rather the control, of a Luther-fearing Church, produced, if not as classical a work as it claimed to be, or one, in the true sense of the word, as catholic as its predecessor, yet certainly a far more Roman Catholic, and at the same time very delightful fiction. The circle of fabulous narrative was thus completed, and a link formed, though in a very gentle and qualified manner, both with Dante's theocracy and the obvious regularity of the Aeneid, the oldest romance of Italy.
The author of this epic of the Crusades was of a family so noble and so widely diffused, that, under the patronage of the emperors and the Italian princes, it flourished in a very remarkable manner, not only in its own country, but in Flanders, Germany, and Spain. There was a Tasso once in England, ambassador of Philip the Second; another, like Cervantes, distinguished himself at the battle of Lepanto; and a third gave rise to the sovereign German house of Tour and Taxis. Taxus is the Latin of Tasso. The Latin word, like the Italian, means both a badger and a yew-tree; and the family in general appear to have taken it in the former sense. The animal is in their coat of arms. But the poet, or his immediate relatives, preferred being more romantically shadowed forth by the yew-tree. The parent stock of the race was at Bergamo in Lombardy; and here was born the father of Tasso, himself a poet of celebrity, though his fame has been eclipsed by that of his son.
Bernardo Tasso, author of many elegant lyrics, of some volumes of letters, not uninteresting but too florid, and of the Amadigi, an epic romance now little read, was a man of small property, very honest and good-hearted, but restless, ambitious, and with a turn for expense beyond his means. He attached himself to various princes, with little ultimate advantage, particularly to the unfortunate Sanseverino, Prince of Salerno, whom he faithfully served for many years. The prince had a high sense of his worth, and would probably have settled him in the wealth and honours he was qualified to adorn, but for those Spanish oppressions in the history of Naples which ended in the ruin of both master and servant. Bernardo, however, had one happy interval of prosperity; and during this, at the age of forty-six, he married Porzia di Rossi, a young lady of a rich and noble family, with a claim to a handsome dowry. He spent some delightful years with her at Sorrento, a spot so charming as to have been considered the habitation of the Sirens; and here, in the midst of his orange-trees, his verses, and the breezes of an aromatic coast, he had three children, the eldest of whom was a daughter named Cornelia, and the youngest the author of the Jerusalem Delivered. the other child died young. The house distinguished by the poet's birth was restored from a dilapidated condition by order of Joseph Bonaparte when King of Naples, and is now an hotel.
Torquato Tasso was born March the 11th, 1544, nine years after the death of Ariosto, who was intimate with his father. He was very devoutly brought up; and grew so tall, and became so premature a scholar, that at nine, he tells us, he might have been taken for a boy of twelve. At eleven, in consequence of the misfortunes of his father, who had been exiled with the Prince of Salerno, he was forced to part from his mother, who remained at home to look after a dowry which she never received. Her brothers deprived her of it; and in two years' time she died, Bernardo thought by poison. Twenty-four years afterwards her illustrious son, in the midst of his own misfortunes, remembered with sighs the tears with which the kisses of his poor mother were bathed when she was forced to let him go.[2]
The little Torquato following, as he says, like another Ascanius, the footsteps of his wandering father, joined Bernardo in Rome. After two years' study in that city, partly under an old priest who lived with them, the vicissitudes of the father's lot took away the son first to Bergamo, among his relations, and then to Pesaro, in the duchy of Urbino, where his education was associated for nearly two years with that of the young prince, afterwards Duke Francesco Maria the Second (della Rovere), who retained a regard for him through life. In 1559 the boy joined his father in Venice, where the latter had been appointed secretary to the Academy; but next year he was withdrawn from these pleasing varieties of scene by the parental delusion so common in the history of men of letters—the study of the law; which Bernardo intended him to pursue henceforth in the city of Padua. He accordingly arrived in Padua at the age of sixteen and a half, and fulfilled his legal destiny by writing the poem of Rinaldo, which was published in the course of less than two years at Venice. The goodnatured and poetic father, convinced by this specimen of jurisprudence how useless it was to thwart the hereditary passion, permitted him to devote himself wholly to literature, which he therefore went to study in the university of Bologna; and there, at the early age of nineteen, he began his Jerusalem Delivered; that is to say, he planned it, and wrote three cantos, several of the stanzas of which he retained when the poem was matured. He quitted Bologna, however, in a fit of indignation at being accused of the authorship of a satire; and after visiting some friends at Castelvetro and Correggio, returned to Padua on the invitation of his friend Scipio Gonzaga, afterwards cardinal, who wished him to become a member of an academy he had instituted, called the Eterei(Ethereals). Here he studied his favourite philosopher, Plato, and composed three Discourses on Heroic Poetry, dedicated to his friend. He now paid a visit to his father in Mantua, where the unsettled man had become secretary to the duke; and here, it is said, he fell in love with a young lady of a distinguished family, whose name was Laura Peperara; but this did not hinder him from returning to his Paduan studies, in which he spent nearly the whole of the following year. He was then informed that the Cardinal of Este, to whom he had dedicated his Rinaldo, and with whom interest had been made for the purpose, had appointed him one of his attendants, and that he was expected at Ferrara by the 1st of December. Returning to Mantua, in order to prepare for this appointment with his father, he was seized with a dangerous illness, which detained him there nearly a twelvemonth longer. On his recovery he hastened to Ferrara, and arrived in that city on the last day of October, 1565, the first of many years of glory and misery.
The cardinal of Este was the brother of the reigning Duke of Ferrara, Alfonso the Second, grandson of the Alfonso of Ariosto. It is curious to see the two most celebrated romantic poets of Italy thrown into unfortunate connexion with two princes of the same house and the same respective ranks. Tasso's cardinal, however, though the poet lost his favour, and though very little is known about him, left no such bad reputation behind him as Ippolito. It was in the service of the duke that the poet experienced his sufferings.
This prince, who was haughty, ostentatious, and quarrelsome, was, at the time of the stranger's arrival, rehearsing the shows and tournaments intended to welcome his bride, the sister of the Emperor Maximilian the Second. She was his second wife. The first was a daughter of the rival house of Tuscany, which he detested; and the marriage had not been happy. The new consort arrived in the course of a few weeks, entering the city in great pomp; and for a time all went happily with the young poet. He was in a state of ecstasy with the beauty and grandeur he beheld around him—obtained the favourable notice of the duke's two sisters and the duke himself—went on with his Jerusalem Delivered, which, in spite of the presence of Ariosto's memory, he was resolved to load with praises of the house of Este; and in this tumult of pride and expectation, he beheld the duke, like one of the heroes of his poem, set out to assist the emperor against the Turks at the head of three hundred gentlemen, armed at all points, and mantled in various-coloured velvets embroidered with gold.
To complete the young poet's happiness, or commence his disappointments, he fell in love, notwithstanding the goddess he had left in Mantua, with the beautiful Lucrezia Bendidio, who does not seem, however, to have loved in return; for she became the wife of a Macchiavelli. Among his rivals was Guarini, who afterwards emulated him in pastoral poetry, and who accused him on this occasion of courting two ladies at once.
Guarini's accusation has been supposed to refer to the duke's sister Leonora, whose name has become so romantically mixed up with the poet's biography; but the latest inquiries render it probable that the allusion was to Laura Peperara.[3] The young poet, however, who had not escaped the influence of the free manners of Italy, and whose senses and vanity may hitherto have been more interested than his heart, rhymed and flattered on all sides of him, not of course omitting the charms of princesses. In order to win the admiration of the ladies in a body, he sustained for three days, in public, after the fashion of the times, Fifty Amorous Conclusions; that is to say, affirmations on the subject of love; doubtless to the equal delight of his fair auditors and himself, and the creation of a good deal of jealousy and ill-will on the part of such persons of his own sex as had not wit or spirits enough for the display of so much logic and love-making.
In 1569, the death of his father, who had been made governor of Ostiglia by the Duke of Mantua, cost the loving son a fit of illness; but the continuation of his Jerusalem, an Oration spoken at the opening of the Ferrarese academy, the marriage of Leonora's sister Lucrezia with the Prince of Urbino, and the society of Leonora herself, who led the retired life of a person in delicate health, and was fond of the company of men of letters, helped to divert him from melancholy recollections; and a journey to France, at the close of the year following, took him into scenes that were not only totally new, but otherwise highly interesting to the singer of Godfrey of Boulogne. The occasion of it was a visit of the cardinal, his master, to the court of his relative Charles the Ninth. It is supposed that his Eminence went to confer with the king on matters relative to the disputes which not long afterwards occasioned the detestable massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Before his departure, Tasso put into the hands of one of his friends a document, which, as it is very curious, and serves to illustrate perhaps more than one cause of his misfortunes, is here given entire.
Memorial left by Tasso on his departure to France.
"Since life is frail, and it may please Almighty God to dispose of me otherwise in this my journey to France, it is requested of Signor Ercole Rondinelli that he will, in that case, undertake the management of the following concerns:
"In the first place, with regard to my compositions, it is my wish that all my love-sonnets and madrigals should be collected and published; but with regard to those, whether amatory or otherwise, which I have written for any friend, my request is, that they should be buried with myself, save only the one commencing "Or che l'aura mia dolce altrove spira." I wish the publication of the Oration spoken in Ferrara at the opening of the academy, of the four books on Heroic Poetry, of the six last cantos of the Godfrey (the Jerusalem), and of those stanzas of the two first which shall seem least imperfect. All these compositions, however, are to be submitted to the review and consideration of Signor Scipio Gonzaga, of Signor Domenico Veniero, and of Signor Battista Guarini, who, I persuade myself, will not refuse this trouble, when they consider the zealous friendship I have entertained for themselves.
"Let them be informed, too, that it was my intention that they should cut and hew without mercy whatever should appear to them defective or superfluous. With regard to additions or changes, I should wish them to proceed more cautiously, since, after all, the poem would remain imperfect. As to my other compositions, should there be any which, to the aforesaid Signor Rondinelli and the other gentlemen, might seem not unworthy of publication, let them be disposed of according to their pleasure.
"In respect to my property, I wish that such part of it as I have pledged to Abram — for twenty-five lire, and seven pieces of arras, which are likewise in pledge to Signor Ascanio for thirteen scudi, together with whatever I have in this house, should be sold, and that the overplus of the proceeds should go to defray the expense of the following epitaph to be inscribed on a monument to my father, whose body is in St. Polo. And should any impediment take place in these matters, I entreat Signor Ercole to have recourse to the favour of the most excellent Madame Leonora, whose liberality I confide in, for my sake.
"I, Torquato Tasso, have written this, Ferrara, 1570."
I shall have occasion to recur to this document by and by. I will merely observe, for the present, that the marks in it, both of imprudence in money-matters and confidence in the goodwill of a princess, are very striking. "Abram" and "Signor Ascanio" were both Jews. The pieces of arras belonged to his father; and probably this was an additional reason why the affectionate son wished the proceeds to defray the expense of the epitaph. The epitaph recorded his father's poetry, state-services, and vicissitudes of fortune.
Tasso was introduced to the French king as the poet of a French hero and of a Catholic victory; and his reception was so favourable (particularly as the wretched Charles, the victim of his mother's bigotry, had himself no mean poetic feeling), that, with a rash mixture of simplicity and self-reliance (respect makes me unwilling to call it self-importance), the poet expressed an impolitic amount of astonishment at the favour shewn at court to the Hugonots—little suspecting the horrible design it covered. He shortly afterwards broke with his master the cardinal; and it is supposed that this unseasonable escape of zeal was the cause. He himself appears to have thought so.[4] Perhaps the cardinal only wanted to get the imprudent poet back to Italy; for, on Tasso's return to Ferrara, he was not only received into the service of the duke with a salary of some fifteen golden scudi a-month, but told that he was exempted from any particular duty, and might attend in peace to his studies. Balzac affirms, that while Tasso was at the court of France, he was so poor as to beg a crown from a friend; and that, when he left it, he had the same coat on his back that he came in.[5] The assertions of a professed wit and hyperbolist are not to be taken for granted; yet it is difficult to say to what shifts improvidence may not be reduced.
The singer of the house of Este would now, it might have been supposed, be happy. He had leisure; he had money; he had the worldly honours that he was fond of; he occupied himself in perfecting the Jerusalem; and he wrote his beautiful pastoral, the Aminta, which was performed before the duke and his court to the delight of the brilliant assembly. The duke's sister Lucrezia, princess of Urbino, who was a special friend of the poet, sent for him to read it to her at Pesaro; and in the course of the ensuing carnival it was performed with similar applause at the court of her father-in-law. The poet had been as much enchanted by the spectacle which the audience at Ferrara presented to his eyes, as the audience with the loves and graces with which he enriched their stage. The shepherd Thyrsis; by whom he meant himself, reflected it back upon them in a passage of the performance. It is worth while dwelling on this passage a little, because it exhibits a brief interval of happiness in the author's life, and also chews us what he had already begun to think of courts at the moment he was praising them. But he ingeniously contrives to put the praise in his own mouth, and the blame in another's. The shepherd's friend, Mopsus (by whom Tasso is thought to have meant Speroni), had warned him against going to court
"Però, figlio, Va su l'avviso," &c.
"Therefore, my son, take my advice. Avoid The places where thou seest much drapery, Colours, and gold, and plumes, and heraldries, And such new-fanglements. But, above all, Take care how evil chance or youthful wandering Bring thee upon the house of Idle Babble." "What place is that?" said I; and he resumed;— "Enchantresses dwell there, who make one see Things as they are not, ay and hear them too. That which shall seem pure diamond and fine gold Is glass and brass; and coffers that look silver, Heavy with wealth, are baskets full of bladders.[6]
* * * * *
The very walls there are so strangely made, They answer those who talk; and not in syllables, Or bits of words, like echo in our woods, But go the whole talk over, word for word, With something else besides, that no one said[7]. The tressels, tables, bedsteads, curtains, lockers, Chairs, and whatever furniture there is In room or bedroom, all have tongues and speech, And are for ever tattling. Idle Babble Is always going about, playing the child; And should a dumb man enter in that place, The dumb would babble in his own despite. And yet this evil is the least of all That might assail thee. Thou might'st be arrested In fearful transformation to a willow, A beast, fire, water,—fire for ever sighing, Water for ever weeping."—Here he ceased: And I, with all this fine foreknowledge, went To the great city; and, by Heaven's kind will, Came where they live so happily. The first sound I heard was a delightful harmony, Which issued forth, of voices loud and sweet;—Sirens, and swans, and nymphs, a heavenly noise Of heavenly things;—which gave me such delight, That, all admiring, and amazed, and joyed, I stopped awhile quite motionless. There stood Within the entrance, as if keeping guard Of those fine things, one of a high-souled aspect, Stalwart withal, of whom I was in doubt
Whether to think him better knight or leader.[8] He, with a look at once benign and grave, In royal guise, invited me within; He, great and in esteem; me, lorn and lowly. Oh, the sensations and the sights which then Shower'd on me! Goddesses I saw, and nymphs Graceful and beautiful, and harpers fine As Linus or as Orpheus; and more deities, All without veil or cloud, bright as the virgin Aurora, when she glads immortal eyes, And sows her beams and dew-drops, silver and gold.
In the summer of 1574, the Duke of Ferrara went to Venice to pay his respects to the successor of Charles the Ninth, Henry the Third, then on his way to France from his kingdom of Poland. Tasso went with the duke, and is understood to have taken the opportunity of looking for a printer of his Jerusalem, which was now almost finished. Writers were anxious to publish in that crafty city, because its government would give no security of profit to books printed elsewhere. Alfonso, who was in mourning for Henry's brother, and to whom mourning itself only suggested a new occasion of pomp and vanity, took with him to this interview five hundred Ferrarese gentlemen, all dressed in long black cloaks; who walking about Venice (says a reporter) "by twos and threes," wonderfully impressed the inhabitants with their "gravity and magnificence."[9] The mourners feasted, however; and Tasso had a quartan fever, which delayed the completion of the Jerusalem till next year. This was at length effected; and now once more, it might have been thought, that the writer would have reposed on his laurels.
But Tasso had already begun to experience the uneasiness attending superiority; and, unfortunately, the strength of his mind was not equal to that of his genius. He was of an ultra-sensitive temperament, and subject to depressing fits of sickness. He could not calmly bear envy. Sarcasm exasperated, and hostile criticism afflicted him. The seeds of a suspicious temper were nourished by prosperity itself. The author of the Armida and the Jerusalem began to think the attentions he received unequal to his merits; while with a sort of hysterical mixture of demand for applause, and provocation of censure, he not only condescended to read his poems in manuscript wherever he went, but, in order to secure the goodwill of the papal licenser, he transmitted it for revisal to Rome, where it was mercilessly criticised for the space of two years by the bigots and hypocrites of a court, which Luther had rendered a very different one from that in the time of Ariosto.
This new source of chagrin exasperated the complexional restlessness, which now made our author think that he should be more easy any where than in Ferrara; perhaps more able to communicate with and convince his critics; and, unfortunately, he permitted himself to descend to a weakness the most fatal of all others to a mind naturally exalted and ingenuous. Perhaps it was one of the main causes of all which he suffered. Indeed, he himself attributed his misfortunes to irresolution. What I mean in the present instance was, that he did not disdain to adopt underhand measures. He skewed a face of satisfaction with Alfonso, at the moment that he was taking steps to exchange his court for another. He wrote for that purpose to his friend Scipio Gonzaga, now a prelate at the court of Rome, earnestly begging him, at the same time, not to commit him in their correspondence; and Scipio, who was one of his kindest and most indulgent friends, and who doubtless saw that the Duke of Ferrara and his poet were not of dispositions to accord, did all he could to procure him an appointment with one of the family of the Medici.
Most unhappily for this speculation (and perhaps even the good-natured Gonzaga took a little more pleasure in it on that account), Alfonso inherited all the detestation of his house for that lucky race; and it is remarkable, that the same jealousies which hindered Ariosto's advancement with the Medici were still more fatal to the hopes of Tasso; for they served to plunge him into the deepest adversity. In vain he had warnings given him, both friendly and hostile. The princess, now Duchess of Urbino, who was his particular friend, strongly cautioned him against the temptation of going away. She said he was watched. He himself thought his letters were opened; and probably they were. They certainly were at a subsequent period. Tasso, however, persisted, and went to Rome. Scipio Gonzaga introduced him to Cardinal Ferdinand de' Medici, afterwards Grand Duke of Tuscany; and Ferdinand made him offers of protection so handsome, that they excited his suspicion. The self-tormenting poet thought they savoured more of hatred to the Este family, than honour to himself.[10] He did not accept them. He did nothing at Rome but make friends, in order to perplex them; listen to his critics, in order to worry himself; and perform acts of piety in the churches, by way of shewing that the love-scenes in the Jerusalem were innocent. For the bigots had begun to find something very questionable in mixing up so much love with war. The bloodshed they had no objection to. The love bearded their prejudices, and excited their envy.
Tasso returned to Ferrara, and endeavoured to solace himself with eulogising two fair strangers who had arrived at Alfonso's court,—Eleonora Sanvitale, who had been newly married to the Count of Scandiano (a Tiene, not a Boiardo, whose line was extinct), and Barbara Sanseverino, Countess of Sala, her mother-in-law. The mother-in-law, who was a Juno-like beauty, wore her hair in the form of a crown. The still more beautiful daughter-in-law had an under lip such as Anacreon or Sir John Suckling would have admired,—pouting and provoking,—[prokaloymenon phileama]. Tasso wrote verses on them both, but particularly to the lip; and this Countess of Scandiano is the second, out of the three Leonoras, with whom Tasso was said by his friend Manso to have been in love. The third, it is now ascertained, never existed; and his love-making to the new, or second Leonora, goes to shew how little of real passion there was in the praises of the first (the Princess Leonora), or probably of any lady at court. He even professed love, as a forlorn hope, to the countess's waiting-maid. Yet these gallantries of sonnets are exalted into bewilderments of the heart.
His restlessness returning, the poet now condescended to craft a second time. Expecting to meet with a refusal, and so to be afforded a pretext for quitting Ferrara, he applied for the vacant office of historiographer. It was granted him; and he then disgusted the Medici by pleading an unlooked-for engagement, which he could only reconcile to his applications for their favour by renouncing his claim to be believed. If he could have deceived others, why might he not have deceived them?
All the lurking weakness of the poet's temperament began to display itself at this juncture. His perplexity excited him to a degree of irritability bordering on delirium; and circumstances conspired to increase it. He had lent an acquaintance the key of his rooms at court, for the purpose (he tells us) of accommodating some intrigue; and he suspected this person of opening cabinets containing his papers. Remonstrating with him one day in the court of the palace, either on that or some other account, the man gave him the lie. He received in return a blow on the face, and is said by Tasso to have brought a set of his kinsmen to assassinate him, all of whom the heroical poet immediately put to flight. At one time he suspected the duke of jealousy respecting the dedication of his poem, and at another, of a wish to burn it. He suspected his servants. He became suspicious of the truth of his friend Gonzaga. He doubted, even, whether some praises addressed to him by Orazio Ariosto, the nephew of the great poet, which, one would have thought, would have been to him a consummation of bliss, were not intended to mystify and hurt him. At length he fancied that his persecutors had accused him of heresy to the Inquisition; and, as he had gone through the metaphysical doubts, common with most men of reflection respecting points of faith and the mysteries of creation, he feared that some indiscreet words had escaped him, giving colour to the charge. He thus beheld enemies all around him. He dreaded stabbing and poison; and one day, in some paroxysm of rage or horror, how occasioned it is not known, ran with a knife or dagger at one of the servants of the Duchess of Urbino in her own chamber.
Alfonso, upon this, apparently in the mildest and most reasonable manner, directed that he should be confined to his apartments, and put into the hands of the physician. These unfortunate events took place in the summer of 1577, and in the poet's thirty-third year.
Tasso shewed so much affliction at this treatment, and, at the same time, bore it so patiently, that the duke took him to his beautiful country seat of Belriguardo; where, in one of his accounts of the matter, the poet says that he treated him as a brother; but in another, he accuses him of having taken pains to make him criminate himself, and confess certain matters, real or supposed, the nature of which is a puzzle with posterity. Some are of opinion (and this is the prevailing one), that he was found guilty of being in love with the Princess Leonora, perhaps of being loved by herself. Others think the love out of the question, and that the duke was concerned at nothing but his endeavouring to transfer his services and his poetic reputation into the hands of the Medici. Others see in the duke's conduct nothing but that of a good master interesting himself in the welfare of an afflicted servant.
It is certain that Alfonso did all he could to prevent the surreptitious printing of the Jerusalem Delivered in various towns of Italy, the dread of which had much afflicted the poet; and he also endeavoured, though in vain, to ease his mind on the subject of the Inquisition; for these facts are attested by state-papers and other documents, not dependent either on the testimony of third persons or the partial representations of the sufferer. But Tasso felt so uneasy at Belriguardo, that he requested leave to retire a while into a convent. He remained there several days, apparently so much to his satisfaction, that he wrote to the duke to say that it was his intention to become a friar; and, yet he had no sooner got into the place, than he addressed a letter to the Inquisition at Rome, beseeching it to desire permission for him to come to that city, in order to clear himself from the charges of his enemies. He also wrote to two other friends, requesting them to further his petition; and adding that the duke was enraged with him in consequence of the anger of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who, it is supposed, had accused Tasso of having revealed to Alfonso some indecent epithet which his highness had applied to him.[11] These letters were undoubtedly intercepted, for they were found among the secret archives of Modena, the only principality ultimately remaining in the Este family; so that, agreeably to the saying of listeners hearing no good of themselves, if Alfonso did not know the epithet before, he learnt it then. The reader may conceive his feelings. Tasso, too, at the same time, was plaguing him with letters to similar purpose; and it is observable, that while in those which he sent to Rome he speaks of Cosmo de' Medici as "Grand Duke," he takes care in the others to call him simply the "Duke of Florence." Alfonso had been exasperated to the last degree at Cosmo's having had the epithet "Grand" added by the Pope to his ducal title; and the reader may imagine the little allowance that would be made by a haughty and angry prince for the rebellious courtesy thus shewn to a detested rival. Tasso, furthermore, who had not only an infantine hatred of bitter "physic," but reasonably thought the fashion of the age for giving it a ridiculous one, begged hard, in a manner which it is humiliating to witness, that he might not be drenched with medicine. The duke at length forbade his writing to him any more; and Tasso, whose fears of every kind of ill usage had been wound up to a pitch unbearable, watched an opportunity when he was carelessly guarded, and fled at once from the convent and Ferrara.