GARDENS OF ESTE AND GONZAGA PRINCES 
loving Duke Alfonso the Second. On one occasion 
a masque with musical interludes called II Tempo d ’ 
Amove was performed by a hundred gentlemen of the 
Court in the Castello Gardens; on another, the ducal 
family and a chosen company of their friends sat 
down to a banquet under an arbour of apple and pear, 
orange and lemon trees, laden with ripe fruit, and 
witnessed a performance of Tasso’s Aminta in the sylvan 
glades opposite, as they sat at table. 1 But the most 
memorable festd was that given in honour of the French 
monarch, Henri III, on his return from Poland in 1574. 
A masque called Id Isold Beata was to be represented at 
the Montagna one summer evening, and preparations 
were made on a vast scale. Thousands of torches 
illuminated the scene, a mimic siege and battle on the 
lake were to be represented before the Court. All was 
ready for the fray, when suddenly the wooden walls of 
the sham castle caught fire and fell in with a crash, 
several of the combatants were thrown into the water 
and drowned, and the festa , which was to have been so 
gay, ended in death and disaster. But if the gardens 
of Ferrara and the festivites at the ducal Court reached 
a pitch of splendour never before attained under Duke 
Alfonso the Second, taxation also increased in an equal 
measure, and the Duke boasted that he had doubled 
his revenues by these exactions. The childless prince 
1 A. Solerti, Ferrara e la corte estense, p. 97. 
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