Evildoers, all the same, had a shocking time. Maria Equicola gives exact particulars of a certain Madonna Laura (name suppressed) who, being caught in adultery, was immured alive; that is to say, she was publicly confined in a cell a few feet square, with a little window, outside the episcopal palace, near the entrance on the right of the high altar of the cathedral of Ferrara. Perjurers went about after their conviction with their tongues securely nailed to little logs of wood. The accounts for the nails and logs exist. Duchess Lucrezia’s sumptuary laws were unsuccessful. The sex of the legislator prevented her from manufacturing laws to regulate fashion, which could be put into practical effect. That was perfectly natural; nor does the failure in any way reflect upon the excellence of the intentions of her ducal highness. She ordained that no woman should wear a gown whose value was higher than the sum of fifteen ducats (say £30), nor jewellery worth more than fifty ducats (say £100). She furnished a specification of the gems which might be worn, and of the fabrics of which gowns might be made. Also, she precisely specified the quantity of material that might be used, and the cut and fashion that was to be adopted. Further, in order to secure the observation of these laws, she ordained a box, having a slit in its lid like a modern letter-box, to be placed in the cathedral by the holy water-stoup; so that fathers, husbands, or lovers, who found themselves outraged by the length or the rotundity of the skirts, or the bulk of the sleeves, or the violence of the style of their women-folk,—and the cost of the same,—secretly might drop in denunciations while in the act of taking holy water; the said denunciations afterwards to be attended-to in a legal manner by the justiciary. Delightfully solemn and futile effort of a charming woman. Well, it failed; not on account of the female peacocks of Ferrara, but by reason of the very skewbald harlequins whose propriety and purses it had aimed to benefit. How many denunciations secretly were dropped into Duchess Lucrezia’s precious box, how many scandalized fathers, husbands, and lovers, sneaked about their daughters, wives, and lemans, is not known. Only one thing is known,—there was not a justiciar in all the duchy of Ferrara, married or unmarried, who dared even to allude to, much less to act upon, the said denunciations, and enforce the law. On the twenty-fifth of August 1509, the Duchess Lucrezia gave birth to a second son, Don Ippolito d’Este, named after his uncle the heraklean Cardinal; and who, in after years, became Archbishop and Cardinal of Milan.