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Updated: June 28, 2025
In the autumn of the same year, Leonora took her daughter to Mantua for a short visit, where she first met Gian Francesco's sister, Elizabeth Duchess of Urbino, who was to become her dearest friend and constant companion in the early days of her married life.
Vittorio, Luigi, and I met there the next morning. I knew the chief officer, and he had promised me an interview. Vittorio was crying, rubbing his knuckles in his eyes, utterly broken up and exhausted. He and Luigi had spent the night together. An hour before, the two had stood at Francesco's bedside in the hospital of San Paulo.
At last, against his will, he sullenly consented that the banishment of his cousin should content him. But it was with infinite bitterness and regret that he passed his word, for his jealousy was of a quality that nothing short of Francesco's death could have appeased.
The duchess and her son, Gian Galeazzo, a boy of ten, received him with open arms, and great was the joy among all the Ghibellines of Milan, when they heard to their surprise that Duke Francesco's son was once more among them. Simonetta looked grave, as he well might, when he heard the news. "Most illustrious duchess," he said to Bona the next day, "do you know what will happen?
It is enough to indicate the goal of many a pleasant pilgrimage: warrior angels of Vivarini and Basaiti hidden in a dark chapel of the Frari; Fra Francesco's fantastic orchard of fruits and flowers in distant S. Francesco della Vigna; the golden Gian Bellini in S. Zaccaria; Palma's majestic S. Barbara in S. Maria Formosa; San Giobbe's wealth of sculptured frieze and floral scroll; the Ponte di Paradiso, with its Gothic arch; the painted plates in the Museo Civico; and palace after palace, loved for some quaint piece of tracery, some moulding full of mediæval symbolism, some fierce impossible Renaissance freak of fancy.
But ere she went she listened to Francesco's thanks, and suffered him to touch her ivory fingers with his lips. There was much he might have said but that the presence of the other three restrained him. Yet some little of that much she may have seen reflected in his eyes, for all that day she rode pensive, a fond, wistful smile at the corners of her lips.
"Is it proofs you lack?" quoth the Duke again, and then with the air of a man launching an unanswerable question: "How came you by the wound you had that day in the woods?" A smile quivered on Francesco's face, and was gone. "I asked for proofs, not questions," he protested wearily. "What shall it prove if I had a hundred wounds?"
Once only did Francesco's light-heartedness fail him, and this was when, upon visiting the armoury, he found but one single cask of gunpowder stored there. He turned to Fortemani to inquire where Gonzaga had bestowed it, and Fortemani being as ignorant as himself upon the subject he went forthwith in quest of Gonzaga.
But these expectations were soon damped; as Francesco's health returned he became restless and melancholy; he saw no prospect of arriving at distinction by his talents, or by his sword; peace reigned throughout the Tuscan states, and the jealousy of the government of all who bore the mark of Ghibelline extraction, forbade the chance of successful exertion and honourable reward; his days were spent in moody abstraction, his nights in feverish dreams; his misfortunes, his accomplishments and his virtues failed to excite affection in the breast of his kinsman, who, jealous of the youth and personal attractions of the man apparently destined to be his heir, grew uneasy at the thought of benefitting a person he had learned to hate; and suddenly resolving to cut off at once the presumptuous expectations which the luckless exile might have cherished, exerted the influence procured by his wealth to form an alliance with the most peerless beauty which the city boasted.
Then he called to mind how he had approved yes, almost approved of Don Francesco's deplorable act of familiarity towards the little serving maid. An absurdly small matter, but symptomatic. Things like that had happened in Africa lately. He remembered various instances where he had intervened on behalf of the natives, despite the murmured protests of the missionaries.
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