With her loss his star began to wane. “When the Duchess Beatrice died, everything fell into ruin. The court, which had been a paradise of joy, became a dark and gloomy inferno; poets and artists were forced to seek another place.” So writes a man of letters, in the last days of the fifteenth century, of a woman of twenty-one who had tried to make the richest and worst court in Italy a home for literature, art, and all that makes for the intellectual good of the race. VII If I have lingered a little over personal details in these brief sketches, it is the better to show the versatile character of the women who shed so much luster on the golden age of the Renaissance. Of the relative moral value of these representative women of their time I think there is little question, in spite of the fact that the age is so persistently quoted to prove that women degenerate in virtue as they advance in intelligence. That the tone of morality was very low, that vice was scarcely frowned upon, that men in power and out of it broke every commandment in the decalogue without compunction or even taking the trouble to put on a veil of respectability, and that a large class of women were swept into the vortex of corruption, is true enough. But it is also true that the strongest protest against this state of affairs was made by women, and that the few prelates who dared lift their voices against the scandals in high places numbered their most zealous assistants among them. To say nothing of the multitudes who cast their jewels and ornaments into the flames at the bidding of Savonarola, and consecrated themselves to a pure and simple if not ascetic life,--all of which may be set down to the account of emotionalism rather than intelligence,--it was the women most noted for talent and learning, whether princess, poet, or university professor, who were most honored for their virtues. The pure-minded Contarini found in Vittoria Colonna his strongest support in a hopeless struggle against the sins and corruptions of the church. Olympia Morata was a conspicuous example of great intellect and great learning put to the service of a bettered humanity at serious, indeed fatal, personal sacrifice. And she was not alone. There were numbers of these women--poets, scholars, and thinkers--who lived spotless lives and worked for the good of their sex and race.