Teaser Tuesday #134

Ed ecco di nuovo la rubrica settimanale Teaser Tuesday, creata dal blog Should Be Reading, che si divide in poche, semplici fasi:
1_ prendi il libro che stai leggendo
2_ apri una pagina a caso
3_ scrivi un breve brano (stando attenti a non spoilerare)
4_ scrivi titolo e autore

On 15 January 1503, Ercole Strozzi gave a ball for her, and it was at this ball that she renewed her brief acquaintance with the most famous of her lovers, Pietro Bembo. A member of a distinguished Venetian family, Bembo was well know in Ferrara, where his father Bernardo had acted as visdomino, or co-ruler, a deeply resented office imposed on the Ferrarese after they lost the war to Venice in 1484. Pietro had stayed on in Ferrara for a while after his father returned to Venice; the cultivated atmosphere of Ercole's court suited his temperament better than the stern, hard-headed mercantile Republic. Bembo's closest friend in Ferrara was Ercole Strozzi from whom he had heard about Lucrezia long before he met her.
Since October 1502 he had been staying in Strozzi's villa at Ostellato and had briefly entertained her there in mid November, writing afterwards to Ercole that he wished she had stayed longer, describing her as 'such a beautiful and elegant woman who is not superstitious about anything'. After the ball in January, he boasted to his brother Carlo of how many compliments 'la duchessa' had paid him. 'Every day,' he added, 'I find her a still worthier lady, seeing she has far excelled all my expectations, great though they were after hearing so many reports of her and most of all from Messer Ercole...' Ercole's reports to Bembo about Lucrezia, which Bembo called 'the Lucretian letters', continued after Pietro left again for Ostellato. According to one authority Bembo was inspired to write verses in praise of Lucrezia which were secretly passed to her by his literary friends in Ferrara, Ariosto and, particularly, Ercole Strozzi.
 - Lucrezia Borgia, Sarah Bradford