Vittoria's moral conduct, both as a wife and as a widow, was wholly irreproachable. A mass of concurrent contemporary testimony seems to leave no doubt whatever on this point. More than one of the poets of her day professed themselves her ardent admirers, devoted slaves, and despairing lovers, according to the most approved poetical and Platonic fashion of the time; and she received their inflated bombast not unpleased with the incense, and answered them with other bombast, all _en règle_ and in character. The "carte de tendre" was then laid down on the Platonic projection; and the sixteenth century fashion in this respect was made a convenient screen, for those to whom a screen was needful, quite as frequently as the less classical whimsies of a later period. But Platonic love to Vittoria was merely an occasion for indulging in the spiritualistic pedantries, by which the classicists of that day sought to link the infant metaphysical speculations then beginning to grow out of questions of church doctrine, with the ever-interesting subject of romantic love. A recent French writer,[186] having translated into prose Vittoria's poetical epistle to her husband, adds that she has been "obliged to veil and soften certain passages which might damage the writer's poetical character in the eyes of her fair readers, by exhibiting her as more woman than poet in the ardent and 'positive' manner, in which she speaks of her love." Never was there a more calumnious insinuation. It is true indeed that the Frenchwoman omits, or slurs over some passages of the original, but as they are wholly void of the shadow of offence, it can only be supposed that the translator did not understand the meaning of them. There is no word in Vittoria's poetry which can lead to any other conclusion on this point, than that she was, in her position and social rank, an example, rare at that period, not only of perfect regularity of conduct, but of great purity and considerable elevation of mind. Such other indications as we have of her moral nature are all favourable. We find her, uninfluenced by the bitter hereditary hatreds of her family, striving to act as peacemaker between hostile factions, and weeping over the mischiefs occasioned by their struggles. We find her the constant correspondent and valued friend of almost every good and great man of her day. And if her scheme of moral doctrine, as gatherable from that portion of her poems which we have not yet examined, be narrow,—as how should it be otherwise,—yet it is expressive of a mind habitually under the influence of virtuous aspiration, and is more humanising in its tendencies, than that generally prevalent around her. [Sidenote: PESCARA'S CHARACTER.]