All contemporary writers agree that he bore his long and tedious captivity with remarkable patience and fortitude. "I have heard," writes the Como historian, Paolo Giovio, "from Pier Francesco da Pontremoli, who was the duke's faithful companion and servant during his captivity, that he bore his miserable condition with pious resignation and sweetness, often saying that God had sent him these tribulations as a punishment for the sins of his youth, since nothing but the sudden might of destiny could have subverted the counsels of human wisdom."
Early in the spring of 1508, the Moro seems to have made a desperate attempt to escape. According to the Milanese chronicler Prato, he bribed one of his guardians, with gold supplied, as we learn, from Padre Gattico, by the friars of S. Maria delle Grazie, and succeeded in making his way out of the castle gates hidden in a waggon load of straw. But he lost his way in the woods that surround Loches, and after wandering all night in search of the road to Germany, he was discovered on the following day by blood-hounds, who were put upon his track. After this, his captivity became more severe. He was deprived of books and writing materials and cut off from intercourse with the outer world. It was then, too, in all likelihood, that he was confined in the subterranean dungeon, still shown as the Moro's prison. The cell, as visitors to Loches remember, is cut out of the solid rock, and light and air can only penetrate by one narrow loophole. There, tradition says, Leonardo's patron, the great duke who had once reigned over Milan, beguiled the weary hours of his captivity by painting red and blue devices and mottoes on his prison walls. Among these rude attempts at decoration we may still discover traces of a portrait of himself in casque and armour, and a sun-dial roughly scratched on the stone opposite the slit in the rock. And there, too, half effaced by the damp, are fragments of inscriptions, which tell the same piteous tale of regret for vanished days and weary longings for the end that would not come.
"Quand Mort me assault et que je ne puis mourir
Et se courir on ne me veult, mais me faire rudesse
Et de liesse me voir bannir. Que dois je plus guèrir?"
Or this—
"Je porte en prison pour ma device que je m'arme de patience par force
de peine que l'on me fait pouster" (porter) ...
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:—
"Il n'y au monde plus grande destresse,
Du bon tempts soi souvenir en la tristesse."