THE CHURCH OF ST. MARIA DELLE GRAZIE AT MILAN
On January 2, 1497, she drove as usual to the church of St. Maria delle Grazie. She remained there for hours, as if only in this one sombre place could she obtain a little respite and tranquillity. Her ladies—who probably disliked these outings beyond expression—had difficulty in coaxing her at last from the building. They got her home, and she seemed much as usual until about eight o’clock in the evening, when the agony of child-birth suddenly commenced in her.
Her pains only lasted three hours. Then she gave birth to a still-born child, and shortly after midnight she died. For a short hour she lay in her canopied bed, worn in body and uncomforted in soul. Then she died, and whom Ludovico loved or did not love mattered not one whit to her.
But her death had been brutal, unexpected, sudden, and acted upon Ludovico like a douche of icy water. Passion for Lucrezia died brusquely through the shock. Beatrice, had she known it, had never been profoundly discarded, and the thought of life without her had not formed part of the Lucrezia madness.
And suddenly she was dead. There had been no reconciliation. In the abruptness of her collapse, there had not been an interval in which to endear her back to joy. She had suffered great pain, and then, in a forlorn and piteous weakness, passed from existence.
Ludovico’s grief became intense. His passionate prostration was so unusual in the callousness of the period, that every one talked about it. He refused to have her name mentioned in his presence, and when most widowers of that time would have been thinking of a second wife, he was still spoken of as caring nothing any longer for his children, or his state, or for anything on earth.
Seven months after her death he continued still apparently a changed man. He had become religious, recited daily offices, observed fasts, and lived “chastily and devoutly.” His rooms were still draped in black, he took all his meals standing, and every day went for a time to his wife’s tomb in the church of St. Maria delle Grazie.