The successors of Cangrande were men of a different and entirely inferior order. Mastino, the elder of his two nephews, had certainly much of his uncle’s ambition; but he had none of his greatness and loftiness of mind, still less of his talents and intellect. Alberto cared only for a life of pleasure, and was but too ready to leave the cares of office and government to his brother, provided he might follow his vicious, frivolous existence undisturbed. Verona at that moment was at the very apogee of her glory. Cangrande’s victories over the neighbouring towns were bringing in rich interest as to money and position; and the Florentine historian Villani, writing of the Scaligers, says: “The rents which accrued to them from those ten towns and from their castles were more than 700,000 florins of gold, which no other Christian king possesses, unless it be the King of France. Apart from the following and the friendship of the Ghibellines, never were there tyrants in Italy possessed of such power.” The ten towns alluded to were Verona, Padua, Vicenza, Treviso, Brescia, Feltre, Belluno, Parma, Modena, and Lucca, and had Mastino but been contented with this ample heritage, his dominion would in all probability have been more firmly established. His craving to add to his state, and convert it into a united kingdom, led however to the downfall of his house. The jealousy of one or two powerful neighbours was aroused; and a sense of the danger about to spread from Verona and envelop the North of Italy became patent to all. The Florentines and the Venetians were the first to stir in the matter, and to unite against the common foe. Florence was not only afraid of an invasion of the Veronese troops, but she also wished to regain possession of Lucca, which had been wrested from her at a very inopportune moment. The Venetians had a grievance, and that a serious one, though of a different nature, against Mastino. He had built a salt factory between Padua and Chioggia, where every Venetian vessel as it passed along the Brenta was called on to pay a tax. The Venetians were not disposed to accept quietly an affront offered them on territory which they considered as strictly their own, and they at once put in a claim for redress. No notice being taken of this appeal, Venice gladly threw in her lot with Florence, and the league between the two Republics was soon after joined by the houses of Este, Visconti, and Gonzago. The league was further strengthened in a strange and unexpected way by Marsilio da Carrara’s desire to unite himself with the other allies against the lord of Verona. This son of the former lords of Padua was keen to expel the Scaligers from his native town, where Alberto della Scala had been appointed governor by his brother Mastino. Alberto, as has been said, lived only for pleasure. He had outraged the wife of Ubertino da Carrara, Marsilio’s cousin, but, far from imagining that such an insult could rankle in the husband’s