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"I remember you a little boy scarce bigger than Ferrante, whom your mother brought to kiss my hand in the very year of my marriage. Yes and you pinched my toy spaniel, sir, and I was so angry with you that I got up and turned my back on the company do you remember? But how should you, being such a child at the time? Ah, cousin how old you make me feel!

They took with them Ferrante Spinola, a mortally-wounded Italian officer of rank, as a trophy of their battle, and a boatload of beef and flour, as an earnest of the approaching relief. While the conquerors were thus gone to enjoy their triumph, the conquered, though perplexed and silenced, were not yet disposed to accept their defeat. They were even ignorant that they were conquered.

Such were the Este whom Ariosto in his poem lauded to the skies. Not until February 22, 1540, did death release Don Ferrante, then in the sixty-third year of his age. Don Giulio was granted his freedom in 1559, and died March 24, 1561, aged eighty-three.

All eyes now turned to Lodovico as the only man who could save Italy from the French invaders. The emperor and the Venetians had been urging him to declare war against France for the last eight weeks, and now Ferrante of Aragon, in his despair, appealed to him by the Sforza blood that flowed in both their veins to deliver him and his kingdom from the dominion of the foreigner.

Already a marriage had been proposed between Alexander's daughter Lucrezia Borgia and Giovanni Sforza, Prince of Pesaro, and the King of Naples looked with alarm on the friendly relations that existed between the Holy See and Milan. "Alexander VI.," said Ferrante, bitterly, "has no respect for the Holy Church, and cares for nothing but the aggrandisement of his own family.

There was her brother-in-law, Francesco Gonzaga, and Niccolo da Correggio, in whose heart that fair face and bright eyes, he tells us, were for ever enshrined; there were her brothers, Alfonso and Ferrante; above all, there was her father, the aged Duke Ercole.

The Duchess, alarmed for the health of Prince Ferrante, fled with him to the dower-house by the Piana; and the strange nature of his Highness's distemper caused many to follow her example.

Two cardinals, who, at the same time, were princes of ruling houses, Giovanni d'Aragona, son of King Ferrante, and Ascanio Sforza, brother of Lodovico il Moro, sold their votes with shameless effrontery; so that, at any rate, the ruling houses of Naples and Milan became interested, by their participation in the booty, in the continuance of the papal system.

Five years afterwards Pope Innocent VIII., having quarrelled with King Ferrante, invited Charles VIII. to invade Naples, and offered him the investiture of this important fief of the Church. But at that time the French monarch had no leisure to think of a foreign expedition.

To this Sixtus retaliated by seeking the friendship of Ferrante of Naples, a move Lorenzo anticipated by forming the league between Florence, Milan, and Venice. This league thoroughly alarmed both the Pope and Ferrante, and on the latter visiting Rome in 1475 a papal-Neapolitan alliance was formed.