The Duchess of Trajetto

It was night--the Duchess was in bed. Her hand shaded her wakeful eyes from the light of a silver lamp fed with perfumed oil, which shone only on what was calculated to please t...

Emerging from the gallery, the Duchess uttered a faint cry, and would have shrunk back again on seeing some dark figures stealthily approaching; but they proved to be only two o...

Giulia di Gonzaga, daughter of the Duke of Sabbionetta, was born somewhere about the beginning of the sixteenth century. She was one of a numerous and beautiful family, and, fro...

A clatter of horses' feet in the court-yard announced the arrival of new guests; and when these proved to be noble kinsmen and friends of the Duchess, who had hastened to rally...

The Medici were very clever in hunting up curiosities of literature; for their encouragement of the arts sprang less from the love of that renown which rewards liberal patronage...

When Cardinal Ippolito had taken leave, and the last glimpse of his scarlet tippet had been seen as his little cavalcade wound out of sight, Giulia found her remaining guests ve...

Giulia remembered, the next morning, as her cameriera was warping some pearls into her hair, that she had meant and half engaged to try a course of mortification on the Cardinal...

After the steed is stolen, we shut the stable-door; and the Duchess, who now felt very cowardly after dark, set a regular watch on the battlements, whose orders were that he sho...

Even in the darkest period of the middle ages, God had not left Himself without witnesses of the Truth among the Alps. It was in the year 1370 that these pure-minded people, fin...

"Vittoria è 'l nome; e ben conviensi a nata Fra le vittorie, ed a chi, o vada o stanzi, Di trofei sempre e di trionfi ornata, La Vittoria abbia seco, o dietro o innanzi. Questa...

Evening was closing on Naples and Pausilippo--bright, serene, odoriferous. The sea spread its azure surface as smooth as glass--many a lateen sail was extended to the grateful b...

Giulia was in Naples, but she was neither enjoying herself nor benefiting herself, as much as she ought to have done. The Princess of Sulmona, who stood in the double relation t...

How fared it with Cardinal Ippolito, after he left Fondi? In a general way we may be pretty sure that he fared sumptuously every day, clothed in purple and fine linen; that he e...

The Emperor Charles the Fifth had been very indignant when he heard of the sack of Fondi, and the attempt to seize the Duchess. Some months afterwards, when Muley Hassan, whom B...

On the afternoon of the 2nd of August, after a meal which we should call luncheon, but which the early habits of those days distinguished as dinner,--succeeded by a moderate sie...

It was given out to the world that Ippolito had been carried off by fever, caught on the marshes during his hot ride to and from Fondi; and this filled the tender-hearted Duches...

--where a graceful simplicity, indeed, reigned, but under the regulation of the purest taste,--where duties, softened into pleasures, filled up every hour; and where leisure, ne...

You may have seen an old print of Titus's Arch, in the foreground of which is an Italian lady of quality, with hoop, lappets, and fan, sailing to church, attended by her gentlem...

Ochino was soon to leave Naples--Valdés was soon to leave this earthly world. For a little while the Church had rest: and then burst out a furious, fiery persecution. Its burnin...