Urbino is not a great way from Mantua, but the diplomatic agent of Urbino found it necessary to urge his master, Francesco Maria della Rovere, a youth of eighteen, to come on a visit to Leonora Gonzaga, whom he described in the most alluring terms: “If your Excellency saw Madame Leonora, and the Marquis’s little mare, you would see the two loveliest things I ever set eyes on. I do not think there is in all Italy anyone more beautiful or virtuous than Madame, and I am sure no king or prince in Christendom has a mare to match his Excellency’s.” Ultimately La Rovere yielded like a lord, and set off incognito to see his wife, a girl of fourteen years and a half, a merry little creature, pretty, well-bred, and a pupil of the historian Sigismondo Golfo. She was presented to him at the palace of Mantua, in the Hall of the Sun. He stepped forward to greet her, and embraced her in the most correct style; then, on Cardinal Gonzago remarking loudly that this was a somewhat frigid demonstration, he went forward again, caught Leonora by the arms and head, and planted a becoming kiss upon her lips. And then they sat down and began chatting on the topics of the day, notably a portrait which had just been finished. To find marriages of mutual affection it would have been necessary to go down among the lower ranks of the people, in country places; “good matches were made”[24] as they danced together at the fair or at the village merry-makings. But in the great world the future spouses were subjected to a system of “interviews.” Louis de la Trémoille,[25] who conceived the eccentric idea of escaping the infliction, found no other means than to introduce himself into the house of his prospective wife, Gabrielle de Bourbon, disguised and under a false name, as they do in the comedies. With a widow, perhaps, a little less ceremony may have been permissible, and then—! In one of his diplomatic despatches Bibbiena[26] relates with much humour an interview of this sort: “To-day there took place an interview between the Duke of Calabria and the divine lady of Forli.[27] Needless to say, his excellency was admirably groomed and attired in the height of Neapolitan fashion. His arrival at Bagnara was welcomed with a salute of musketry, and he stayed to dinner. He spent two hours here with the countess, but it is patent to everyone that Feo[28] has the lady well under his thumb. His excellency took his leave very well satisfied; but he was only moderately taken with the countess: he told me that they joined hands very gingerly, that he caught some winking and shrugs. And so we are off again, like a cricket into its hole.” The final scene was enacted between the bride’s father and the bridegroom or his parents. It was remarkably like any other sort of bargaining: and on this subject an old author throws a charming side-light: he urges paterfamilias to bestow as much care on the choice of a son-in-law as on the purchase of a dog!