that Vittoria's mind had made very considerable progress in the Protestant direction. No reason is assigned for her stay at Lucca. Visconti, with unusual brevity and dryness, merely states that she visited that city.[190] And it is probable that he has not been able to discover any documents directly accounting for the motives of her visit. But he forbears to mention that the new opinions had gained so much ground there that that Republic was very near declaring Protestantism the religion of their state. After her totally unaccounted-for visit to the heresy-stricken city, she proceeds to another almost equally tainted with suspicion. [Sidenote: A REPUBLIC OF LETTERS.] It is no doubt perfectly true that Duke Hercules and his court received her with every possible distinction on the score of her poetical celebrity, and deemed his city honoured by her presence. He invited, we are told, the most distinguished poets and men of letters of Venice and Lombardy to meet her at Ferrara. And so much was her visit prized that when Cardinal Giberto sent thither his secretary, Francesco della Torre, to persuade her to visit his episcopal city Verona, that ambassador wrote to his friend Bembo, at Venice, that he "had like to have been banished by the Duke, and stoned by the people for coming there with the intention of robbing Ferrara of its most precious treasure, for the purpose of enriching Verona." Vittoria, however, seems to have held out some hope that she might be induced to visit Verona. For the secretary, continuing his letter to the literary Venetian cardinal, says, "Who knows but what we may succeed in making reprisal on them? And if that should come to pass, I should hope to see your Lordship more frequently in Verona, as I should see Verona the most honoured as well as the most envied city in Italy."[191] It is impossible to have more striking testimony to the fame our poetess had achieved by her pen; and it is a feature of the age and clime well worth noting, that a number of small states, divided by hostilities and torn by warfare, should have, nevertheless, possessed among them a republic of letters capable of conferring a celebrity so cordially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Italy. From a letter[192] written by Vittoria to Giangiorgio Trissino of Vicenza, the author of an almost forgotten epic, entitled "Italia liberata da Goti," bearing date the 10th of January (1537), we learn that she found the climate of Ferrara "unfavourable to her indisposition;" which would seem to imply a continuance of ill-health. Yet it was at this time that she conceived the idea of undertaking a journey to the Holy Land.[193] Her old pupil, and nearly life-long friend, the Marchese del Vasto, came from Milan to Ferrara, to dissuade her from the project. And with this view, as well as to remove her from the air of Ferrara, he induced her to return to Rome, where her arrival was again made a matter of almost public rejoicing.