So the priests did their office—a part of the celebration, which, curiously enough, we learn from Passeri, was often in those days at Naples, deferred, sometimes for years, till after the consummation of the marriage—the Pantagruelian feastings were got through, the guests departed, boat-load after boat-load, from the rocky shore of Ischia; and the little island, restored after the unusual hubbub to its wonted quiet, was left to be the scene of as happy a honeymoon as the most romantic of novel readers could wish for her favourite heroine. CHAPTER III. Vittoria's Married Life—Pescara goes where Glory Waits Him—The Rout of Ravenna—Pescara in Prison turns Penman—His "Dialogo di amore"—Vittoria's Poetical Epistle to her Husband—Vittoria and the Marchese del Vasto—Three Cart-loads of Ladies, and three Mule-loads of Sweetmeats—Character of Pescara—His Cruelty—Anecdote in Proof of it. The two years which followed, Vittoria always looked back on as the only truly happy portion of her life, and many are the passages of her poems which recall their tranquil and unbroken felicity, a sweet dream, from which she was too soon to be awakened to the ordinary vicissitudes of sixteenth century life. The happiest years of individuals, as of nations, afford least materials for history, and of Vittoria's two years of honeymoon in Ischia, the whole record is that she was happy; and she wrote no poetry. Early in 1512 came the waking from this pleasant dream. Pescara was, of course, to be a soldier. In his position not to have begun to fight, as soon as his beard was fairly grown, would have been little short of infamy. So he set forth to join the army in Lombardy, in company with his father-in-law, Fabrizio. Of course there was an army in Lombardy, where towns were being besieged, fields laid waste, and glory to be had for the winning. There always was, in those good old times of course. French, Swiss, Spanish, German, Venetian, Papal, and Milanese troops were fighting each other, with changes of alliances and sides almost as frequent and as confusing as the changing of partners in a cotillion. It is troublesome and not of much consequence to understand who were just then friends and who foes, and what were the exact objects all the different parties had in cutting each other's throats. And it will be quite sufficient to say that the Duchy of Milan was at that moment the chief bone of contention,—that the principal pretenders to the glory of "annexing" it were the King of France and the King of Spain, who was now also King of Naples—that the Pope was just then allied with Spain, and the Venetians with France, and that Italy generally was preparing for the destiny she has worked out for herself, by the constant endeavour to avail herself of the destroying presence of these foreign troops, and their rivalries, for the prosecution of her internal quarrels, and the attainment of equally low and yet more unjustifiable, because fratricidal aims.