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But Messer Galeazzo's story does not end here. A day or two later he takes up the thread of his discourse again, and describes the pleasant day which the duchess spent at Cussago, one of Lodovico Sforza's favourite villas on the sunny slopes of the Brianza, six miles from Milan, on the way to Como.
The gay days of Vigevano and Cussago were over, the deer and wild boars grazed unharmed in these woodland valleys, and when Kaiser Maximilian asked the duke for one of his famous breed of falcons, Lodovico sent him one belonging to Messer Galeazzo's breed, saying that he no longer kept any of his own, and had quite given up hunting since the death of the duchess of blessed memory.
"Having reached Cussago," he goes on, "we had a grand fishing expedition in the river, and caught an immense quantity of large pike, trout, lampreys, crabs, and several other good sorts of smaller fish, and proceeded to dine off them until we could eat no more.
The young duke is to make the Castello his residence, and be as seldom absent from Milan as possible, never going further than his country houses of Abbiategrasso, Cussago, Monza, Dece, and Melegnano, until he has reached the age of fourteen.
On the 6th, the duke took his wife, whose delicate state of health needed rest, back to Milan, and a few days later returned with Foscari to meet the emperor at the ducal villa of Cussago.
Galeazzo was a true prophet, and in the British Museum we may still admire the beautifully illuminated deed of gift, adorned with friezes of exquisite cherubs and medallion-portraits of Lodovico and Beatrice, by which the fair palace and lands of Cussago became the property of the young duchess.
And to-day, when so many of his noblest creations have perished, when the glorious pile of the Castello of Milan, with its stately towers and frescoed halls, rich decorations and vast gardens, has been defaced and battered by the hands of barbarian invaders, when Leonardo's fresco is a wreck and the tomb of Beatrice broken to pieces, when Vigevano and Cussago are in ruins, and the matchless library of Pavia has been scattered to the winds, we rejoice to think that the Certosa remains to show us how splendid were the dreams and how rare the skill of artists in the days when Lodovico Sforza reigned over Milan.
It was at Vigevano that winter, on the 28th of January, that Lodovico drew up the deed of gift by which he endowed his wife with his palace lands of Cussago, as well as the Sforzesca and other lands in the district of Novara and Pavia.
My illustrious lord took the greatest possible pleasure in hearing all we had done, far more, indeed, than if he had been there in person, and I believe that my duchess will in the end reap the greatest benefit, and that Signor Lodovico will give her Cussago, which is a place of rare beauty and worth.
"This morning, being Friday," he writes on the 11th of February, 1491, "I started at ten o'clock with the duchess and all of her ladies on horseback to go to Cussago, and in order to let your Highness enter fully into our pleasures, I must tell you that first of all I had to ride in a chariot with the duchess and Dioda, and as we drove we sang more than twenty-five songs, arranged for three voices.
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