But he could not remain where he was born. A spell drew him to Ferrara: love is the real mother-land! Coldly received by Duke Alphonsus, he withdrew once more; he wandered through the little Courts of Mantua, Urbino, Turin, singing to pay for the hospitality shown him. He said to the Metauro, Raphael's native stream: "Weak, but glorious child of the Apennines, I, a vagrant traveller, come to seek safety and repose upon thy banks." Armida had passed to Raphael's cradle; she was to preside over the enchantments of the Farnesina. Surprised by a storm in the neighbourhood of Vercelli, Tasso celebrated the night which he had passed in a noble-man's house in the beautiful dialogue known as the _Padre di famiglia._ At Turin, he was refused admission at the gates, so wretched was his condition. Hearing that Alphonsus[180] was about to contract a new marriage, he again took the road for Ferrara. A divine spirit attached itself to the steps of this god hidden under the garb of the shepherds of Admetus; he thought that he saw and heard that spirit; one day, seated by the fire and seeing the sun-light on the window: "_Ecco ramico spirito_," he said, "_che cortesemente è venuto a favellarmi._" [Sidenote: Tasso in prison.] And Torquato conversed with a sun-beam. He re-entered the fatal city even as the bird flings itself into the jaws of the serpent that fascinates it. Disowned and spurned by the courtiers, taunted by the servants, he launched out into complaints, and Alphonsus ordered him to be locked up in a mad-house in the Hospital of Sant' Anna. Then the poet wrote to one of his friends: "Bowed down under the weight of my misfortunes, I have renounced all thoughts of glory; I should think myself lucky if I could only quench the thirst with which I am devoured....The idea of an unlimited captivity and my indignation at the ill-treatment to which I am subjected increase my despair. The filthiness of my beard, hair and clothes renders me an object of disgust to myself." The prisoner implored the whole earth and even his pitiless persecutor; he drew from his lyre accents which ought to have made the walls to fall with which his wretchedness was girt about: Piango il morir; non piango il morir solo, Ma il modo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Mi saria di conforto, aver la tomba, Ch' altra mole innalzar credea co' carmi. Lord Byron wrote a poem called the _Lament of Tasso_; but he cannot get away from himself and substitutes himself everywhere for the persons whom he sets before us; even as his genius lacks tenderness, his "lament" is no more than an imprecation. Tasso addressed the following petition to the Council of the Ancients of Bergamo: