Lucrezia borgia: life, love and death in renaissance italy by Sarah Bradford

Author:Sarah Bradford [Sarah Bradford]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biographie
ISBN: 9780670033539
Published: 2004-10-21T00:38:40+00:00

yet I have no fear, for it could never make me so afraid that I could cease to love you and not count you the one true mistress of my self and my life, ever serving you with the purest and warmest loyalty that a valiant and steadfast lover can offer the woman he loves and honours above all things human. I do beseech you never to alter and never to lose heart in this love, though there are so many things which oppose and obstruct our desires … But endeavour rather to be ever more deeply inflamed with love the more arduous you see your resolve become… in spite of ill fortune I love you and … nothing can take this from me and I fancy, if there be likewise nothing that can make you not love me, in the end the day must come when we two shall triumph and vanquish ill fortune … and when that day comes it will be so lovely and precious for us to recall that we were staunch and constant lovers…

There is no doubt that Bembo was deeply concerned at the possibility that their correspondence might be discovered – presumably by Alfonso. ‘Above all,’ he implores her, ‘I beg you to take care that no one may know or discover your true thoughts lest the paths which lead to our love become even more restricted and thwarted than they are at present. Do not trust anyone, no matter whom, until I come to you, which in any case will be soon after Easter if I am alive…’ She could trust the bearer of this letter and reply via him. ‘Indeed I beseech you to do so, for since we can talk so little face to face please speak at length with me in letters and let me know what life you lead, and what thoughts are yours and in whom you confide, which things torment you and which console. And take good care not to be seen writing, because I know you are watched very closely.’ After kissing ‘one of those prettiest and brightest and sweetest eyes of yours which have pierced me to the soul, first and lovely cause, though not the only one, of my ardour’, he begged her to accept his favourite medal, an Agnus Dei: ‘Out of love for me sometimes please deign to wear at night the enclosed Agnus Dei which I once used to wear upon my breast, if you cannot wear it in the day, so that your precious heart’s dear abode, which I should gladly stake my life to kiss but once and long, may at least be touched by this roundel which for so long has touched the abode of mine …’11

Bembo, it seems, did see her, as he promised, once again when he passed through Ferrara in April en route to take part in a Venetian embassy to Rome. He may even have seen her on his return journey early in June when he went on to Mantua to be presented to Isabella.

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