On the 6th of November Lodovico returned to Milan, and joined his wife at Vigevano, where Beatrice had remained during her husband's absence with her infant son. We have no letters to tell us what her feelings were at this eventful period, and do not learn if she joined her husband during the few days of his hurried visit to Milan in October. But we are glad to find that she expressed sympathy with the unhappy widow of Giangaleazzo, and showed real concern for her cousin's melancholy condition. After her husband's death, Isabella's courage and fortitude broke down under the long strain, and for some days she shut herself up in a dark room, and refused to take food, or accept any comfort. Four Milanese councillors waited upon her at Pavia to offer their condolences, and invited her to come to Milan in the name of the new duke and the people, assuring her that she and her children should be treated with due honour, and retain possession of the ducal residence in the Castello. This attention gratified her, and Paolo Bilia, an old and faithful servant, who had been long in her service, wrote by her desire to Lodovico on the 28th of October—
"My Lady is much pleased to hear that you have accepted the gift which she sent you, and is grateful for the kind messages which she has received from Your Illustrious Consort, as well as the offers which you have made her, and the addresses of the councillors. Under Niccolo da Cusano's treatment her health has certainly improved; and the children are very well, only the boy objects to the black clothes and hangings of the rooms."
A week later the Councillor Pusterla wrote that he visited the Duchess every day, and found her much rested, and already considerably calmer, and was charged to convey her warmest thanks to the duke for his kindness, and express her wish to show herself in all things his obedient daughter. But she still refused to leave Pavia, and shrank from seeing any one but her children and servants.
"The duchess," wrote Donato de Preti from Milan to his mistress Isabella d'Este, "has not yet arrived here, but is expected on Friday. All the rooms and furniture in the Castello are hung with black. To-day a man who came from Pavia is said to have brought word that Count Borella had been sent to ask the duchess for her son Francesco, but that she had refused to send him. This, however, may not be true, for the person who told me is not to be trusted."
On the 29th of November, the same informant wrote again—
"The widowed duchess has not yet come to Milan. It appears that she has asked leave to remain at Pavia until after her confinement, and this she will certainly do. I hear that she still mourns her dead lord."
Her mother-in-law, Duchess Bona, remained with her at Pavia, and here, on the first of December, she received a visit from Chiara Gonzaga, a sister of the Marquis of Mantua, and wife of Gilbert, Duke of Montpensier, who was captain-general of the French army. This princess, who was now on her way to Mantua, was sincerely attached to both Isabella and Beatrice d'Este, and proved a loyal friend to Lodovico at the French court, while after her husband's death he, in his turn, gave her the benefit of his powerful help in her efforts to obtain the recovery of her fortune from the French king. There seems, however, to have been no truth in the report that the widowed duchess was again with child, and on the 6th of December she finally summoned up courage to return to Milan. On her arrival she was received by Beatrice, and Barone, the jester, who was on the same familiar terms with the Marchioness of Mantua as he was with her sister, sent her the following pathetic account of their meeting—
"Last night the Duchess Isabella arrived in Milan, and our duchess went to meet her, two miles outside the town, and directly they met, our duchess got out of her chariot and entered that of Duchess Isabella, both of them weeping bitterly, and so they rode together towards the Castello, where the Duke of Milan met them on horseback at the gate of the garden. He took off his cap, and accompanied them to the Castello, where they all three alighted, and placing Duchess Isabella between them, our duke and duchess accompanied her to her old rooms. When they reached these rooms they sat down together, and the Duchess Isabella could do nothing but weep, until at last the duke spoke to her, and begged her to calm herself, and be comforted, with many other similar words. Dear friend, the hardest heart would have been melted with compassion at the sight of her, with her three children, looking so thin and altered by her grief, wearing a long black robe like a friar's habit, made of rough cloth, worth fourpence the yard, and her eyes hidden by a thick black veil. Certainly I, for one, could not help crying, and if I had not restrained myself, I should have wept still more."[55]
Until the death of Beatrice, Isabella of Aragon and her children occupied the rooms in the Castello where she and her husband had formerly resided, and spent the spring and summer in the Castello of Pavia, but the widowed duchess lived in complete retirement during the next two years, and her name seldom appears in contemporary records. Her mother-in-law Bona, retained her rooms until the following January, when the duke desired her to move to the old palace near the Duomo, known as the Corte Vecchia, partly because the use of her apartments was required by the court officials, and partly owing to the intrigues which she secretly practised. Only lately Lodovico's envoys at Antwerp had informed him of the bitter words which Bona wrote against him to her daughter Bianca, words which the empress's secretary thought it wiser to pass over when he read her mother's letters aloud, taking care, he adds, to see that they were burnt before they could do further mischief. A year afterwards, Bona left Milan for good and returned to France, where she lived at Amboise until the end of 1499, when she came back to her native land of Savoy, and died at Fossano on the 8th of January, 1504.
Meanwhile Maffeo Pirovano, after being delayed on his journey by violent storms and floods, and narrowly escaping with his life from the brigands and highwaymen who infested the streets of Cologne, had at length reached Antwerp and discharged his errand. In his letters to the duke, he gives an interesting account of his interview with the emperor, whose imposing presence and gracious kindness made a deep impression upon him.