Under such sinister influences the crisis speedily arrived. Whilst seated in the Duchess of Urbino's apartment, in her mother's palace, he rushed with his dagger on an attendant who chanced to enter. This, whether a premeditated assault, or an idle hallucination, seems to have been the ground on which he was, by order of Alfonso, placed under restraint; but when the paroxysm was passed, he was reconducted to the Duke's presence with ample assurances of pardon. The iron had, however, entered into his soul, and the idea that he was in disgrace, owing to the malicious backbiting of foes real or imaginary, could not be driven from his mind. He retired from their supposed persecutions to a Franciscan convent,[*183] but, finding in its quiet no peace for his troubled spirit, he fled in disguise from these illusions, and, led perhaps by the bright memory of his early days, arrived on the sunny shores of Sorrento, where he sought a refuge with his married sister. But alas! the charms of that radiant land shed no gladsome influence on his soul. Ere a few months passed, he returned to Ferrara, in hopes of proving to the Duke that the crimes and the frenzy, of which he believed himself accused, were equally calumnies. In the festive and kindly reception with which he was greeted, the wayward poet found new grounds for jealousy, imagining a plot to be formed against his literary fame, by plunging him in a round of dissipation, whilst "others" (meaning his patron) should reap the glory and profits due to his creative genius. That conduct so provoking should have brought upon him real slights, in addition to his imagined wrongs, can scarcely be doubted; and, wounded at heart, he again had recourse to flight, wandering aimlessly by Mantua, Padua, and Venice, to Pesaro, the refuge of his happier youth. We shall elsewhere introduce the letter which he there addressed to the Duke of Urbino; though it obtained him a compassionate welcome, his new host naturally counselled his return to the home of his adoption, as the place where he was most certain to be cared for. But in a fresh access of disease, he escaped from such suggestions, and obeyed them not until after he had visited Turin, disguised by poverty and filth. [Footnote *183: He was placed under restraint in S. Francesco, in Ferrara, in fact.]