In fact, though the Court of Urbino labored already under that manifold disease of waste which drained the marrow of Italian principalities, its atrophy was not apparent to the eye.

It could still boast of magnificent pageants, trains of noble youths and ladies moving through its stately palaces and shady villa-gardens, academies of learned men discussing the merits of Homer and Ariosto and discoursing on the principles of poetry and drama.
Bernardo Tasso read his _Amadigi_ in the evenings to the Duchess.

The days were spent in hunting and athletic exercises; the nights in masquerades or dances.

Love and ambition wore an external garb of ceremonious beauty; the former draped itself in sonnets, the latter in rhetorical orations.

Torquato, who was assigned as the companion in sport and study to the heir-apparent, shared in all these pleasures of the Court.