"I found that Mantua, even apart from her great place in the movement of Humanism, in the art of the Renaissance, had really been under these Gonzaga, Lords of Mantua—this their title from first to last—the central pivot of north Italian history; that she held her place, both in culture and political importance, beside Milan, Venice, Rome and even Florence; that in writing this story of the Gonzaga I came near to writing that of Italy if not of Europe. ... I have tried ... to clothe those dry bones of History with something of their living reality. ... I have even sometimes seemed to myself to be present in the scenes I have pictured—on summer nights to have heard the music of the lute and girlish laughter when Isabella sat with Elisabetta Gonzaga in her “Paradiso” above the lakes of Mantua; to have been beside her Lord Francesco in that press and fury of conflict on the banks of Taro; to have seen her yet again, a queen and mother, among those terror-stricken fugitives in the Palazzo Colonna at Rome; to have followed poor Crichton in that last midnight stroll beneath the dark arcaded streets of old Mantua; or within the vast Reggia to have heard the whispered voices, the hurried steps of courtiers when Duke Vincenzo, last of his line, was nearing his end."