"It was thus,çoisRené however, that I 'scattered gold,' that I was an ambassador, entertained in pomp and state by the Governor of Loretto, in the same town where Tasso was lodged in a sorry den and where, for want of a little money, he was unable to continue his journey. He payed his debt to Our Lady of Loretto by his _canzone_:
"Madame de Chateaubriand made amends for my transient fortune by climbing the steps of the Santa Chiesa[540] on her knees. After my victory of the night, I had a better right than the King of Saxony to deposit my wedding-coat in the Treasury of Loretto; but I shall never forgive myself, a puny child of the Muses, for having been so powerful and so happy in the spot where the singer of Jerusalem had been so weak and so miserable! Torquato, do not take me in this unusual moment of my inconstant prosperity; riches are not my habit; see me on my way to Namur, in my attic in London, in my infirmary in Paris, in order to find in me some distant resemblance to thyself!
"I have not, like Montaigne, left my portrait in silver at Our Lady of Loretto, nor that of my daughter, _Leonora Montana, filia unica_[541]; I have never desired to survive myself; but still, a daughter, and one who should bear the name of Leonora!"
"After leaving Loretto, passing Macerata, leaving Tolentino[542], which marks a step of Bonaparte and recalls a treaty, I climbed the last redans of the Apennines. The mountain table-land is moist and cultivated as a hop-garden. To the left were the seas of Greece, to the right those of Iberia; I could be pressed by the breath of the breezes which I had inhaled at Athens and Granada. We descended towards Umbria, winding down the curves of the leafless gorges, where live suspended in clusters of woods the descendants of the mountaineers who furnished the Romans with soldiers after the Battle of Trasimenus[543].
"Foligno used to possess a Virgin by Raphael which is to-day in the Vatican. 'Vene' occupies a charming position at the source of the Clitumnus. Poussin[544] has reproduced that warm, suave site; Byron has sung it coldly[545].
"Spoleto gave birth to the present Pope[546]. According to my courier Giorgini, Leo XII. has placed the galley-slaves in that town to do honour to his birthplace. Spoleto dared to resist Hannibal[547]. It displays several works of Lippi the Elder[548] who, nurtured in the cloister, a slave in Barbary, a kind of Cervantes[549] among painters, died at over sixty years of age of the poison administered to him by the relations of Lucrezia[550], whom he was believed to have seduced."