Pilgrimages also were capable of becoming a source of exquisite emotions for artists in happiness. The author of the _Imitation_ has said that to be often on pilgrimage is seldom to be a saint. Indeed, at the moment when the indulgences were pronounced, the church porches were quite invisible behind the smoke from the cookshops or the booths in the fair, and an old author complains that you could not even catch sight of your friends. But how these gross indulgences were transfigured by the aesthetic spirit! What ravishing effects it derived from them! It was no longer paintings or sculptures that troubled hearts and pure hearts gazed upon: they penetrated the clear heavens above. Blessed are the pure! The sweet, tender Isabella d’Este set out thus to transport her soul across the plains of Umbria, towards the calm and glorious homes of peace and art, Loretto and Assisi. It was early spring, when the days were clear and sunny; every morning after mass the little caravan resumed its march with its picturesque escort, piously, tranquilly, ideally. During the Easter festival it made a halt with the Duke and Duchess of Urbino in the delightful palace of Gubbio, smiling down from amongst its gardens and fountains. The woman who has been able to live these hours of pure enthusiasm is conscious of accomplishing a large part of her dream. She is within sight of reconciling two opposing forces, the forces of Nature and the forces of the human heart, and forming out of them a love in harmony with Plato’s thought and Raphael’s brush. In their dealings with Nature, the platonists sought above all to elevate and sentimentalise it; they did not care for it masculine and stern, but wished it feminine.