After Cangrande’s demise, however, the lordship of his dominions fell into very different hands. He was succeeded by his two nephews, Mastino and Alberto, of whom the elder was devoured by an insatiable ambition to extend his lordship still further and to make of it an independent kingdom and the arbiter of Italian destinies; whilst the younger, Alberto, was merely a man of pleasure. Thus it came about that before long Mastino had engaged his people in disputes with the republics of Florence and Venice and the clans of Este, Visconti, and Gonzaga; Alberto, as his subscription to the general ill-will, having at the same time inflicted an outrageous wrong upon the great Paduan house of Carrara in the person of one of its women. So that the Scaligeri had to contend with external foes and with rebellion as well. By the end of 1339, ten years after Cangrande’s death, their dominions had been reduced to the two cities of Verona and Vicenza; moreover, Mastino had been excommunicated for killing his uncle’s kinsman, Bishop Bartolomeo della Scala, in anger at some remonstrance on the prelate’s part. His repentance, though, was sincere and lasting; for it is said of him that, after the crime, he never again suffered any living being to look upon his face, not even allowing his wife, Taddea de Carrara, a relative of the lady injured by Alberto, to behold it. Mrs. Wiel, in her brilliant history of Verona, to which famous work I would fain express my immense obligation, is of the opinion that this tradition may well owe its origin to the fact that the armoured equestrian statue of Mastino, over his tomb in Verona, is represented with the vizor down, as indicating Mastino’s desire to conceal his features permanently from sight.