Alexander Guarini the grammarian, professor in the university and secretary to the Duke; Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent Greek scholars of his day, a man of vast erudition and the first writer of any value on the ancient mythology; Bartolomeo Ricci, the learned but amusingly vain–glorious and quarrelsome scholar and critic, whose comedy in Italian prose entitled "the Nurses" is reckoned by Quadrio among the best in the language, and who was brought to Ferrara in 1539, on the recommendation of Calcagnini, to be tutor to Duke Hercules' son Alphonso, then six years old; the two brothers Chilian and John Sinapi, Germans, who occupied the chairs of Greek and Medicine in the University of Ferrara, of whom the former was Olympia's master, and was regarded by her as a second father; and lastly, but bound to Morato and his family by a more intimate and closer friendship than any of the others enumerated, Celio Secondo Curione,—all these, with others of similar tastes and pursuits formed a society, which rendered Ferrara at that time perhaps the most attractive and desirable residence for a scholar, of any city in Italy. [Sidenote: DUKE HERCULES II.'S MARRIAGE.] Another circumstance occurred not many years after Morato's first establishment in Ferrara, which very notably contributed to impress a special character on the learned society there congregated, and to make that city a rallying point for the free thought, which was beginning yeast–like to heave the surface of Italian life. The difficulties of protecting his dominions from the encroachments and greed of the Church, which compelled Alphonso to be continually oscillating between the friendship of the Emperor, or of the French King, according to the ever shifting aspects of Italian affairs, and the preponderance of the danger imminent from one side or the other, necessitated in 1528 an alliance with the latter. And with this view a marriage was arranged between Hercules, who was to succeed his father Alphonso in the Duchy as second duke of that name, and Renée, daughter of Louis XII. Hercules, then just twenty years old, went to Paris, where the marriage was celebrated on the 28th of June, 1528, and brought home his bride in the November of that year.