"Leonora," the Cardinal said softly, "have you heard what Lucrezia was saying, that this young poet has written an epic? If I could see it I might be able to help him in his career, perhaps give him fame." "O Uncle, will you? How good you are! I will write him at once." "My dear, I am not good, or disinterested. I am a selfish, an ambitious old man. This festival, given ostensibly for the entertainment of my friends and to introduce my charming nieces, is a part of my deep, ulterior motives. Come, I will confess the machinations of my wicked old heart. Why not, since my ambitions are for you as well as for myself? Nay, Leonora, never flush and tremble, I have no wish to buy my own advancement by selling you to some degenerate prince. Matchmaking is not my kind of diplomacy. I have seen enough in our own family of magnificence won through the martyrdom of women. Your mother, Renee of France, though a king's daughter, brought with her a dowry of unhappiness. My own mother, innocent though she was, bequeathed to us the shameful legacy of the Borgias' deeds and instincts. You may be happy, Lucrezia, with your Duke of Urbino. I ask no confidences, but I am glad that I am not responsible for your marriage. "You, at least, Leonora, shall live your own life wedded or unwedded as you like. I shall be so great that I can ennoble whom I will, and you, beloved child, shall be the power behind the throne to advise me on whom to shower my benefits." Lucrezia clapped her hands softly. "Bravo, dear Uncle, I have guessed this ambition, have I not? Cardinal de' Medici is already spoken of as the Pope's successor. But the Medici balls have been carved too often over St. Peter's chair, and you are minded to blazon in their place the d'Este eagle. You need not answer for I know that I am right." The Cardinal smiled mysteriously. "Too shrewd, my niece, too shrewd by half. How your woman's intuition leaps over intervening obstacles. Never a whisper of this guess at my aims. Remember, it is but your own surmise and that I have never breathed such an aspiration. The immediate object of my solicitude is to secure a charming play worthy of the setting of Villa d'Este breathing the spirit of Ovid and Anacreon, one which will make the old Greek gods live again in these delicious haunts and will redound to the reputation of your uncle's taste in literature." "How magnanimous you are," cried Leonora, "to disclaim your principal motive, that of helping Tasso! He shall come, and he will give you the most beautiful idyl that was ever written." * * * And who shall say that Tasso did not make good the promise of his patroness? In the _Amyntas_ we have the development of a theme which is the inevitable product of such a temperament in such a situation, and to the poem itself we will now look for a record of what transpired at Villa d'Este during the writing and the presentation of the pastoral.