Veronica Gambara deserves a place among the good and illustrious women of this time; and though she occupied a position far less conspicuous than that of the Countess of Urbino, she was still a person of reputation and importance. Born in the year 1485, her "fortunate parents," as Zamboni calls them, gave her a most careful and thorough education, and as a young woman she was noted for her poetic gifts, which were of a high order. At the age of twenty-five she married Ghiberto, Count of Correggio, and their union was one of true sympathy and deep attachment, such as was rarely seen then, when the _mariage de convenance_ was more in vogue, perhaps, than it is in these later days in Paris. Nine happy years they spent together, and two sons were born to them; then Ghiberto died, leaving Veronica in such grief that she fell ill and hovered a long time between life and death. In one of her poems she relates that it was the fear that she might not meet her beloved husband in Paradise which prevented her from dying with him. She had work to do, however, as her husband, in sign of his great confidence in her, had made her his sole executrix and given into her care the government of Correggio. Veronica had always possessed a lively imagination, and now in her grief her sorrow was shown to the world in a most extravagant way. She wore the heaviest and blackest mourning obtainable; her apartments, furnished henceforth with the bare necessities of life, were tapestried in black; and black was the hue of her livery, her carriages, and her horses. To further proclaim to all the world her love for the departed, she had painted over the door of her chamber the couplet which Virgil has ascribed to Dido: "Ille meos, primus qui me sibi junxit, amores Abstulit: ille habeat secum servetque sepulchro!" [He who first linked me to himself hath borne away my affection: may he possess it still and retain it in his grave!]