As for good–old–times Borso, the just, though he had not the advantage of book–learning himself, he honoured it in others. The fact of his own deficiency in this respect, we gather from the amusingly frank avowal of a contemporary chronicler, who in a dedication of his book to his sovereign,[20] remarks that, "Fortune, ever the enemy of worth, has not willed, that to your other singular accomplishments should be added that of literature." From the records of his reign however, it would seem, that illiterate as he was, he must have had talents, that would make an invaluable chancellor of the exchequer. For the same historians, who give us the most glowing accounts of his magnificence assure us, that he never oppressed his subjects with unjust or grievous taxation. He dressed we are told, even when in the country, in brocade and cloth of gold; he never went without a chain about his neck of the value of seventy thousand ducats (!!), kept seven hundred magnificent horses in his stables, and dogs and falcons in proportion. Then his buildings were on a scale that might rival the doings of Napoleon the Third. But that collar! We have heard of the oppressive weight of the trappings of state, but little thought of the terrible extent of the reality. For seventy thousand ducats must be reckoned at the lowest calculation to be worth at the present day thirty–five thousand pounds, and to be equivalent to about two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds weight of gold. Now, admitting that nine–tenths of this value was represented by the exquisite workmanship of the celebrated Venetian goldsmiths, still we must suppose, poor Duke Borso to have walked about the world with upwards of two hundred weight of gold round his neck! [Sidenote: HERCULES THE FIRST.]