We would willingly, as Protestants, have visited this wicked chapel;
but we were prevented from seeing it, as well as the famous frescoes
of Dosso Dossi in the Hall of Aurora, by the fact that the prefect was
giving a little dinner (_pranzetto_) in that part of the castle. We
were not so greatly disappointed in reality as we made believe; but
our _servitore di piazza_ (the unlettered one) was almost moved to
_lesa maestà_ with vexation. He had been full of scorching patriotism
the whole morning; but now electing the unhappy and apologetic
custodian representative of Piedmontese tyranny, he bitterly assailed
the government of the king. In the times of His Holiness the Legates
had made it their pleasure and duty to show the whole castle to
strangers. But now strangers must be sent away without seeing its
chief beauties, because, forsooth, the prefect was giving a little
dinner. Presence of the Devil!


VII.

In our visits to the different churches in Ferrara we noticed devotion
in classes of people who are devout nowhere else in Italy. Not only
came solid-looking business men to say their prayers, but gay young
dandies, who knelt and repeated their orisons and then rose and went
seriously out. In Venice they would have posted themselves against a
pillar, sucked the heads of their sticks, and made eyes at the young
ladies kneeling near them. This degree of religion was all the more
remarkable in Ferrara, because that city had been so many years
under the Pope, and His Holiness contrives commonly to prevent the
appearance of religion in young men throughout his dominions.