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Again, in large letters among the fragment of red and blue paint, we read "Celui qui ne craint fortune n'est pas bien saige." Even more pathetic, when we recall the joyous days at Milan and Vigevano, where Lodovico listened to readings from Dante in Beatrice's rooms, is the following version of Francesca da Rimini's famous lines:
"I am hoping to go to Vigevano on Monday," he writes from Milan on the 26th of February, "with my wife, and intend to make extensive preparations for fresh hunting-parties, so that when you are here we may be able to give you the more pleasure. As for my wife, I really believe that since your departure she has not let a single day pass without mounting her horse!"
Among them was young Ariosto, the bard of the Orlando Furioso, who was to celebrate the praises of all the princely personages present at Pavia and Vigevano, in his great poem, and who on this occasion probably met Leonardo for the first time. Fêtes and hunting-parties now succeeded each other every day.
The Venetian, Marino Sanuto, unkindly suggests that the Moro would not allow the emperor to come to Milan, lest he should see Duchess Isabella's son, who was the rightful heir to the crown. In all probability the true reason lay in Maximilian's dislike of state-pageants, and his preference for the freedom and country pleasures of Vigevano.
A few days afterwards, the emperor went on to the ducal villa at Meda, near Como, where Lodovico met him with the Cardinal di Santa Croce and Foscari, and conducted him, on the 2nd of September, to see Duchess Beatrice at Vigevano.
"Your most humble and devoted servant, GALEAZ SFORTIA VICECOMES, Armorum Capitaneus. Vigevano, 30th of March, 1491." Isabella, however, still remained obdurate, declaring that on no account would she follow Beatrice's changeable conduct, and was ready to defend her hero against a hundred thousand opponents.
Duke Lodovico himself, immediately on his return to Vigevano in November, had written begging the Marchesa to come to Milan in January, and on the 15th she left Mantua. On the day after her arrival she paid a visit of condolence to the widowed duchess, whose sorrowful condition filled her with compassion.
He had given back peace to his nephew's realm and had vanquished external foes and quelled internal dissensions, he had brought rivers of water to make the barren fields of Vigevano fertile, and had rebuilt the ancient Forum and raised fair porticoes and fine houses round the wide square.
And now, as a crowning gift to this his native city, he had restored and beautified the ancestral castle of the illustrious house of Sforza and had reared stately halls and a fair tower to make Vigevano a home of perpetual delight.
In these articles it was stipulated that France should restore all the conquests she had made in Germany; that the reversion of the dukedom of Tuscany should be vested in the duke of Lorraine; that Lorraine should be allotted to king Stanislaus, and after his death be united to the crown of France; that the emperor should possess the Milanese, the Mantuan, and Parma; that the king of Sardinia should enjoy Vigevano and Novara; that Don Carlos should be acknowledged king of Naples and Sicily, and retain the island of Elba, with all the Spanish territories on the coast of Tuscany; and that France should guarantee the pragmatic sanction.
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