"Your Highness's servant,
Polissena d'Este.
From Milan, 12th of February, 1491."
And Beatrice herself wrote to Isabella in answer to her letter from her sister, describing the festivities at Ferrara, where her presence had been sadly missed by her affectionate relatives.
"I leave you to imagine how much content and delight your letter of the 17th has given me. For in it you give me so full and vivid a description of the successful fêtes in honour of the wedding of Madonna Anna, our brother's wife and dearest sister, that I seem to have been present there myself. And since you know well how much I love and respect you, I am sure you will understand how glad I was to hear from you. Your letter, indeed, gave me greater pleasure than any which I have received since you left here, and I am quite sure that all of these pageants and spectacles were distinguished by the utmost beauty and gallantry, as you say, since they were all planned and arranged by our dear father, who orders these things with consummate wisdom and perfection. I can well believe that my absence has been a real grief to you, and that these fêtes have given you but little pleasure, since I was not there. For my own part, I cannot deny that, now I am without your company, I feel not only that I am deprived of a very dear sister, but that I have lost half of myself. And if it were not for the new and continual amusements which my illustrious husband provides every day for my pleasure, I should have been inconsolable until I could be once more with you. But since our hearts and thoughts are still one, and we are able to exchange letters constantly, I beg you to take comfort as I do, and rest content in feeling that, now these ceremonies are all over, we can at least speak to each other by means of letters, written with our own hands, as you have promised me."[10]
This simple, warm-hearted letter, which breathes all the frankness and affection of Beatrice's nature, is written, like most of her early letters, in her own hand. The words are often badly spelt, and her handwriting is larger and less formed than that of Isabella, which it otherwise resembles. But owing to the multiplicity of interests and occupations that claimed her time after the first years of her married life, the young duchess generally employed a secretary, and has left comparatively few letters. Lodovico himself addressed several letters to his sister-in-law, to whom he was sincerely attached, and in order to facilitate the intercourse between the two sisters, and as he said, to leave Isabella no excuse for not answering his communications, he sent a courier regularly every week to Mantua, with orders to await the Marchesana's pleasure and bring back her letters.
"Loving you cordially as I do," he writes, a fortnight after her departure, "and, knowing that I have in you a very dear sister, nothing can give me greater pleasure than letters from your hand. I thank your Highness most sincerely for all that you tell me, and most of all for your warm expressions of affection and for saying how sorry you were to leave us, and how not even the splendid fêtes in Ferrara could console you for being deprived of our presence. All I beg of you is to write often, and I will see that your letters are brought here."
Besides her sister and brother-in-law and Madonna Polisenna, Isabella had another correspondent at the court of Milan, in the person of Messer Galeazzo di Sanseverino, with whom she had formed a warm friendship at Pavia, and who had promised to give her frequent news of her sister, while at the same time he still carried on the battle over Roland and Rinaldo which had been started in the park of the Castello at Pavia. He too, writing on the 11th of February, was able to assure the Marchesana that all was going well, and that the relations between her sister and Signor Lodovico left nothing to be desired.
"My Duchess," as he always calls the mistress to whose service he had pledged his sword and life, "perseveres in showing Signor Lodovico an affection which is truly beyond all praise, and, to put it briefly, I am satisfied that there is such real attachment between them, that I do not believe two persons could love each other better."
The presence of this young and joyous princess gave a touch of romance to court life, and inspired men like Galeazzo and Niccolo da Correggio with a chivalrous devotion to her person. Every one was ready to obey her wishes, and eager to win her smiles and to earn her thanks.
Even Giangaleazzo, the feeble duke who seldom took pleasure in anything but horses and dogs, and often treated his own wife in a brutal way, felt the charm of this bright young creature, and was stirred out of his usual apathy by the coming of Beatrice. In a letter which he addressed to the Duke of Ferrara after the wedding festivities, he went out of his way to express the affection with which this charming princess, his wife's cousin and his uncle's wife, has inspired him.