_Tasso._ When you caught the swallow in my curtains, and trod upon my knees in catching it, luckily with naked feet. The little girl of thirteen laughed at the outcry of her brother Torquatino, and sang without a blush her earliest lay. _Cornelia._ I do not recollect it. _Tasso._ I do. Rondinello! rondinello! Tu sei nero, ma sei bello. Cosa fa se tu sei nero? Rondinello! sei il primiero De' volanti, palpitanti, (E vi sono quanti quanti!) Mai tenuto a questo petto, E percio sei il mio diletto.[11] _Cornelia._ Here is the cocomero; it cannot be more insipid. Try it. _Tasso._ Where is the boy who brought it? where is the boy who sang my _Aminta_? Serve him first; give him largely. Cut deeper; the knife is too short: deeper; mia brava Corneliolina! quite through all the red, and into the middle of the seeds. Well done! FOOTNOTES: [10] The miseries of Tasso arose not only from the imagination and the heart. In the metropolis of the Christian world, with many admirers and many patrons, bishops, cardinals, princes, he was left destitute, and almost famished. These are his own words: '_Appena_ in questo stato ho comprato _due meloni_: e benche io sia stato _quasi sempre infermo_, molte volte mi sono contentato del manzo: e la ministra di latte o di zucca, _quando ho potuto averne_, mi e stata in vece di delizie.' In another part he says that he was unable to pay the carriage of a parcel. No wonder; if he had not wherewithal to buy enough of zucca for a meal. Even had he been in health and appetite, he might have satisfied his hunger with it for about five farthings, and have left half for supper. And now a word on his insanity. Having been so imprudent not only as to make it too evident in his poetry that he was the lover of Leonora, but also to signify (not very obscurely) that his love was returned, he much perplexed the Duke of Ferrara, who, with great discretion, suggested to him the necessity of feigning madness. The lady's honour required it from a brother; and a true lover, to convince the world, would embrace the project with alacrity. But there was no reason why the seclusion should be in a dungeon, or why exercise and air should be interdicted. This cruelty, and perhaps his uncertainty of Leonora's compassion, may well be imagined to have produced at last the malady he had feigned. But did Leonora love Tasso as a man would be loved? If we wish to do her honour, let us hope it: for what greater glory can there be, than to have estimated at the full value so exalted a genius, so affectionate and so generous a heart! [11] The author wrote the verses first in English, but he found it easy to write them better in Italian: they stood in the text as below: they only do for a girl of thirteen: