Beatrice Sforza.'
II
Notwithstanding the frank tone of this letter, it was full of finished policy. Beatrice concealed from her sister her private anxieties and annoyances, for, as matter of fact, peace was very far from reigning between husband and wife. The lady hated Leonardo neither for heresy nor atheism, but because he had painted the portrait of Cecilia Bergamini, the Duchess's most detested rival. Of late, also, she had suspected an intrigue with one of her ladies, Madonna Lucrezia Crivelli.
At this time Ludovico was at the zenith of his power. Son of Francesco Sforza—that daring mercenary from the Romagna, half soldier, half brigand—he dreamed of making himself lord of an united Italy.
'The Pope,' he boasted, 'shall be my chaplain, the Emperor my captain, Venice my treasury, and the King of France my courier.'
He signed himself 'Ludovicus Maria Sfortia Anglus Dux Mediolani,' deducing his descent from Anglus the Trojan, companion of Æneas. The Colossus, monument to his father Francesco, with the inscription Ecce Deus, was designed as a testimony to the divine origin of the Sforzas. For all his external prosperity, however, the Duke was tortured by anxiety and secret fear. He knew himself unloved by the people, and reckoned a usurper. Once in the Piazza dell' Arrengo the people, seeing the widow of Gian Galeazzo with her eldest son, had shouted, 'Long live Francesco, our rightful Duke!'
The boy was eight years old, and famed for his intelligence and beauty. Marin Sanuto, the Venetian, wrote of him: 'The people desire him for their prince, even as they desire God.' Beatrice and her husband had recognised that the death of Gian Galeazzo had not been sufficient to make them lords of Milan, since in this child the shade of his father was rising from the tomb.
There was talk in the city of mysterious portents. At night, above the castle towers, a strange glow had appeared as that of a conflagration. In the palace chambers agonising groans had been heard. It was remembered that when Gian Galeazzo had lain dead it had been impossible to shut his left eye, omen of the imminent death of one of his near kinsmen; the eyelids of the Madonna dell' Albore had quivered; outside the Porta Ticinese an old woman's cow had dropped a double-headed calf. The Duchess herself had seen an apparition in the Sala della Rocchetta, had fainted with terror, and refused to discuss it with any one, even her husband. She had altogether lost that vivacity and grace which had been so attractive to her spouse, and, filled with the gloomiest prognostications, was awaiting the approaching birth of her child.