These, it must be admitted, were tidings of a sort to irritate a ducal husband, troubled little about his "justification," but much about his investiture parchments;—most orthodoxly willing to be saved either by works or faith, or any other way Holy Church might deem best for him; but extremely anxious about his "tail male," and the securing of his temporalities against the strangely temporal appetites of that spiritual mother. For of all the long disputes between Duke Hercules and the Apostolic chamber, painfully prosecuted by envoys, memorials, writings innumerable, by even personal riding to Rome, and heart–wearying struggle with the obstructions, insincerities and chicaneries of that most intolerable of human entities, the gist was briefly this. My body, with its ducal cloak and trappings, its dignities, possessions, and hereditaments to be mine, and the same to pass to the heirs thereof lawfully begotten;—my soul, with all thereunto appertaining,—of course carrying with it _sans mot dire_, the souls of all my subjects,—to be yours in eternal fee simple, to fashion, manage, and dispose of as to you shall seem fit. A fair bargain surely this, proposed by Duke Hercules of Ferrara, by no means a singular or eccentric prince, if indeed souls were what Mother Church was specially eager after, as she said! And this agreement might have been quickly and easily made, to be loyally observed by either party, as agreements between honest folk are, had it not been that Holy Mother Church, fully minded to keep tight hold of the souls in question, would not give up the hope of laying her hand on the bodies also. And now in the midst of all the uphill work of driving his negotiation to a favourable conclusion, as he hoped, while promising largely, and most sincerely, poor man! the complete cession of his own and subjects' souls, here was his own wife, not only saying her soul was her own, but disposing of it to Mother Church's most dreaded and detested enemy.