"My wife," wrote the Moro to his sister-in-law, "came suddenly face to face with this furious beast, and herself gave it the first wound, after which Messer Galeazzo and I followed suit, so that the boar must have had great pleasure in feeling how much trouble it had given us and to what dangers its hunters had been exposed."
The result of this long and fatiguing hunting expedition was that Beatrice fell seriously ill. Lodovico was much alarmed, and sent daily bulletins both to his sister-in-law and to her mother at Ferrara. "There is no fresh news to give you here," he wrote on the 6th of October. "My whole days are spent at the bedside of my dear wife, endeavouring to distract her thoughts and amuse her mind as best I can during her illness."
Isabella, who had intended to return home from Genoa, hurried back to Milan at the news of her sister's illness, and did not leave her until she was convalescent. During these weeks Lodovico showed himself the most devoted and attentive of husbands, and his letters to Isabella are full of the practical jokes and witty dialogues and repartees with which he and Messer Galeazzo amused the duchess. The following letter affords a characteristic specimen of the kind of fooling which these great Renaissance lords and ladies carried on at the expense of the half-witted jesters and buffoons who were attached to their different households:—
"Dear Sister and most illustrious and excellent Lady,
"You know what good sport we had in the wild boar-hunts at which you were present this last summer. Poor Mariolo, you remember, could not be there, first because he was ill at Milan, and afterwards because he was required to keep my wife company during her illness, and was much distressed to have been absent from these expeditions, when he heard that even the king's ambassadors had wounded a wild boar. And he told us all what great things he would have done, had he only been present. Now that my dearest wife is better, and begins to be able to go out-of-doors again, I thought we would have a little fun at his expense. Some wolves and wild goats having been driven into a wood near La Pecorara, which, as you know, is about a mile from here, on the way to La Sforzesca, Cardinal Sanseverino had a common farm pig shut up in the same enclosure, and the next day we went out hunting, and took Mariolo with us. While we hunted the wolves and wild goats, we left the pig to him, and he, taking it for a wild boar, chased it with a great hue and cry along the woods. If your Highness could only have seen him running after this pig, you would have died of laughter, the more so that he gallantly tried to spear it three times over, and only succeeded in touching its side once. And seeing how proud he was of his prowess, we said to him, 'Don't you know, Mariolo, that you have been hunting a tame pig?' He stood dumb with astonishment, and stared as if he did not know what we could mean, and so we all came home infinitely amused, and every one asked Mariolo if he did not know the difference between a wild boar and a tame pig!
"Your brother,
Lodovico Maria Sfortia.[31]
Vigevano, December 6, 1492."
The most remarkable thing about these letters is that a prince who was engaged in so much and varied business, who himself conducted a vast correspondence in which the most intricate diplomatic questions of the day were involved with his envoys at the different European courts, and personally superintended every detail of administration, while at the same time he gave minute instructions to the hundreds of architects, sculptors, and painters in his service, should have found time to write these bantering epistles to his sister-in-law. One of these letters, for instance, is devoted to a long account of the jokes that passed between Messer Galeazzo and the duchess at table, how Messer Galeazzo begged to be allowed a taste of the duchess's soup, and complained that he was forgotten now that the Marchesana was no longer there, and how Beatrice told him she would write and tell her sister, to which he replied, "Tell her whatever you like, as long as I get my soup!"
Yet at this very moment, when he penned these joking letters to Isabella, Lodovico was engaged in some of the most difficult and anxious negotiations with other States.
During Ercole d'Este's visit, the question of sending the customary congratulations to the new Pope had been discussed, and Lodovico had suggested that the ambassadors of the four allied powers—Milan, Naples, Florence, and Ferrara—should send a joint deputation, both as a mark of special honour to His Holiness, and as a public manifesto to foreign powers of the strength of these united States. The step, he was confident, would produce a good effect both on the King of the Romans and Charles VIII. of France, whose designs on Italy were already exciting alarm. Both the Duke of Ferrara and King Ferrante, who had been consulted through his ambassadors, when they came to hunt at Vigevano, agreed readily to Lodovico's proposal, and the only person to raise objections was Piero de' Medici, who had lately succeeded his father as chief magistrate of Florence, and pretended to the same power. The death of his friend Lorenzo had been sincerely deplored by Lodovico, who, before many months had passed, began to discover how weak and contemptible a character his son possessed, and had already consulted his astrologer as to the influence which this young man would have upon his own fortunes. Now the vain and foolish youth refused to join in the proposed embassy to the Vatican, because he wished to appear alone before Alexander VI. and impress that new Pope by the magnificence of his apparel and retinue. Not content with frustrating the Moro's plan, Piero induced King Ferrante to withdraw his consent to the joint deputation, a step which did not tend to improve the strained relations that had existed for some time past between Naples and Milan. Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere had retired to Ostia in disgust at the election of the Borgia Pope, leaving Ascanio Sforza all powerful at the Vatican, and the Pope availed himself of every occasion to show his friendship for Lodovico. Already a marriage had been proposed between Alexander's daughter Lucrezia Borgia and Giovanni Sforza, Prince of Pesaro, and the King of Naples looked with alarm on the friendly relations that existed between the Holy See and Milan. "Alexander VI.," said Ferrante, bitterly, "has no respect for the Holy Church, and cares for nothing but the aggrandisement of his own family. Rome will soon become a Milanese camp."