ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 



in the ascendant. All through these months of 

 apparent idleness Caesar was collecting money and 

 troops, and early in April he once more took the 

 field at the head of a large army supplied with 

 fresh guns and ammunition. This time the doom 

 of Faenza was sealed. On the last day of April the 

 exhausted garrison surrendered, and its brave leader, 

 Astorre Manfredi, was taken prisoner to Rome and 

 strangled by Cassar's orders in Castell' Sant' Angelo. 

 But we hear no more of Guidarello. He was 

 not present at the last siege of Faenza, and no 

 further letters from his hand reached the Podesta 

 of Ravenna. A dark mystery overshadows the hero's 

 fate. All we know is that he was murdered one 

 night at Imola by an assassin's hand, and fell a victim 

 to some foul conspiracy. This we learn from an 

 elegy composed by a Venetian poet, Bernardino Catti, 

 and published in the following year. " Here," sings 

 the bard, " lies the good knight Guidarello, the 

 glory of warlike Mars and the boast of learned 

 Minerva. Imola, with secret steel, took the life 

 which Ravenna gave to be the pride of Italy." And 

 in another poem we read : " Once Guidarello was 

 the flower of Italy and of the whole world ; 

 born and bred on the ancient soil of Ravenna, 

 he fell at Imola, treacherously murdered by the 



hand of a proud Roman." Dr. Corrado Ricci, the 



246 



