During his absence, the detested Lord of Rimini closed his wayward career. No Italian prince of this century fills so picturesque a niche in mediæval history; none has more fully realised its worse vices, or so narrowly escaped its noblest qualities. Bred as a soldier of fortune, and numbering among his subjects the most martial population of the Peninsula, his bravery when tested became mere bravado, his duplicity rendered him a dangerous adherent to any cause. Unbounded ambition was in him so marked by selfishness, ready talent so clogged by overweening conceit, that all his efforts and aspirations resulted in failure, and with the means and opportunities of establishing an important sovereignty, he left behind him but a shadow of departed power. His domestic morals were scandalous in an age of notorious laxity. Not only were his three wives sacrificed to jealousy or vengeance, but their murders are boastfully alluded to on his monument in the miserable jest, that although the horns he wore were visible enough, he had found means to curtail them.[146] [Footnote 146: Such, at least, is the key afforded by Sansovino to the obscure couplet inscribed on his tomb in his great edifice of S. Francesco:-- "Porto le corna ch'ogn'uno le vede, E tal le porta che non se lo crede." Baldi asserts for all his wives an unblemished reputation, and charges him with the murder of but two of them. Mazzuchelli alleges that he jilted or repudiated the first, and made away with the next two.]