[Footnote 166: Vat. Urb. MSS. No. 324, 373, 727, 1193, 1236, 1272.] [Footnote 167: See _ante_, p. 39, for Battista the elder.] [Footnote 168: A relic of like strange perversion of childhood still obtains at Rome, in the displays at the Aracoeli Church from Christmas to Epiphany, where girls of five years old are elevated on a table and spout to assembled crowds the events of the Nativity.] "Then closed that modest and majestic eye. Her pious soul, from mundane risks released, To God its rapid flight devoutly winged, Leaving a tearful household, and the state Grief-stricken, whilst Italia's noblest names Partook their sorrow." Muzio says, that by "her death was dissolved the most honoured, fitting, and congruous union of that or any other age." The obsequies, as announced by Federigo to the Priors of Siena, were celebrated with singular magnificence on the 17th of August, in the Church of S. Bernardino, at Urbino. They were attended by thirty-eight envoys from the princes, cities, and great feudatories of Italy, excluding those of Venice and Siena, retarded by bad weather. These deputations formed a retinue of three hundred and sixteen nobles, besides two hundred and ninety belonging to the court of Urbino, and three hundred and eight ecclesiastics. The procession was swelled by crowds of citizens from every town in the state, so that nearly 2000 appeared in mourning garb.[169] The Countess left six daughters and an infant son, the care of whom was a serious burden to her lord. But Sanzi tells us that, "Feeling at length how sad and profitless It were on this dark world his hopes to rest, His grief within his inmost heart he hid, And mastered it in grave and modest guise."[170] [Footnote 169: Campano's funeral oration, Vat. Ottob. MSS., No. 3135, f. 274.] [Footnote 170: Porcellio, in his Feltria, Vat. Urb. MSS. 710, describes his emotions in these rough lines:-- "Ipse domum rediens primum vacua atria lustrat, Mox semota petens, clausis de more fenestris, In luctu et lacrymis, nigraque in veste sedebat. Pullati incedunt comites, famulique minores, Ac nigra sunt mensi mantilia, nigra supellex, Et thalamum infaustum velamina nigra tegebant."] The next two years were chiefly passed at home, in bringing his mind to this pious resignation, in urging forward his palaces, and in administering his authority for the welfare of an attached people. Of an existence so tranquil and pleasing no glimpses are transmitted to us by his biographers, for it was barren of those martial feats which they considered the almost exclusive field of their labours. But from its not inglorious repose he was called to new honours.