The drunkenness and gluttony of northern nations for a like reason found no favor in Italy. It disgusted the Romans beyond measure to witness the swinish excesses of the Germans. Their own sensuality prompted them to a refined Epicureanism in food and drink; on this point, however, it must be admitted that the prelates, here as elsewhere foremost in profligacy, disgraced the age of Leo with banquets worthy of Vitellius.[1] We trace the same play of the fancy, the same promptitude to quicken and intensify the immediate sense of personality at any cost of after-suffering, in another characteristic vice of the Italians. Gambling among them was carried further and produced more harm than it did in the transalpine cities. This we gather from Savonarola's denunciations, from the animated pictures drawn by Alberti in his _Trattato della Famiglia_ and _Cena della Famiglia_ and also from the inductions to many of the _Sacre Rappresentazioni_.[2]
[1] See Gregorovius, _Stadt Rom_, vol. viii. p. 225: 'E li cardinali comenzarono a vomitar e cussi li altri,' quoted from Sanudo.
[2] One of the excellent characteristics of Alfonso the Great (_Vespasiano_, p. 49) was his abhorrence of gambling.
Another point which struck a northern visitor in Italy was the frequency of private and domestic murders.[1] The Italians had and deserved a bad reputation for poisoning and assassination. To refer to the deeds of violence in the history of a single family, the Baglioni of Perugia, as recorded by their chronicler Matarazzo; to cite the passages in which Varchi relates the deaths by poison of Luisa Strozzi, Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and Sanga; or to translate the pages of annalists, who describe the palaces of nobles swarming with _bravi_, would be a very easy task.[2] But the sketch of Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography, which will form part of my third volume, gives so lively a picture of this aspect of Italian life, that there is no reason to enlarge upon the topic now. It is enough to observe that, in their employment of poison and of paid assassins, the Italians were guided by those habits of calculation which distinguished their character.[3] They thought nothing of removing an enemy by craft or violence: but they took no pleasure in murder for its own sake.[4] The object which they had in view prompted them to take a man's life; the mere delight in brawls and bloodshed of Switzers, Germans, and Spaniards offended their taste.