Rogues, wretches, profligates, and all their train
No more shall find on Latian soil their home;
For he, the plague-spot of our church and state,
Peter, is gone to meet in hell his fate."
Orthodox Burriel, however, assures us, that all the malicious outpourings of envious hate were silenced and put to shame by the following victorious couplet in the genuine decorous tombstone style.
"Sage in his prime!—'tis that has caused our tears;
Death from his virtues deemed him full of years."
Among the select minority, who truly mourned the premature death of this youthful sage, the Duke of Milan and his daughter may be safely reckoned. The marriage arranged wholly by him might very possibly run risk of being broken off. And in any case the Duke's ulterior and more ambitious schemes were nipped in the bud.
Catherine was, however, as her biographer assures us, "infinitely rejoiced and comforted" by an early courier from Rome, bearing assurances, that her unseen bridegroom and his august kinsman had no intention of allowing the Cardinal's death to make any difference in the arrangements for the marriage.
Let the reader's mind dwell a moment on the "infinite rejoicing and comfort" of this eleven-year-old princess, at the news that she was not after all to lose her marriage with an unseen stranger;—remembering the while that, making allowance for longitude and latitude, we Northerns may for "eleven" read thirteen or fourteen.
The Duke prudently hastened to make peace with his powerful and dangerous neighbours, the Venetians, and having accomplished this, soothed his disappointment by giving a magnificent reception to some envoys sent to him by the Sultan of Egypt; a circumstance so novel in Europe, as greatly to exalt, we are told, the name and glory of the house of Sforza among neighbouring, and even among transalpine, courts and princes; and which naturally and necessarily required, in order to do due honour to the occasion, new taxes on the subjects of a dynasty so distinguished, new pretexts for compelling rich citizens to purchase pardon for imaginary offences, and new perversions of law for the purpose of colouring confiscations.
THE ROMAN HISTORY READINGS COMPLETED.
These, however, were little matters, which passed in the shade fitted for such things. The broad sunlight of prosperity shone gloriously on the house of Sforza, on its apparently durably established fortunes, and on the gala doings in the gay streets of sunny Milan. The poor might grumble low down in the social depths out of hearing about scarcity and dearness of bread; a few citizens might groan over ducats or lands abstracted, or wives or daughters abducted for the needs or pleasures of their gracious sovereign; but the admirable principles of civil and religious duty and subordination, which prevailed in those ages of faith, were such, that in all probability the great Galeazzo might have continued to preserve order, and save society in Milan, had not those gloomy students, whom we have from time to time caught sight of poring over their crabbed folios, while the merry city was gazing at some brilliant and costly pageant or other, brought their studies to a conclusion towards the end of the year 1476. For though it did so happen,[66] that two out of Cola Montano's three pupils owed to the Duke's profligacy a sister's shame, while the family of the third had been unjustly deprived by him of an inheritance, yet the historians, who have recorded the facts, seem to be unanimously of opinion, that had it not been for those pernicious historical readings, they would have borne these misfortunes as meekly as hundreds of their fellow-citizens did similar mishaps, instead of posting themselves at the door of the cathedral on St. Stephen's day in December of the year 1476, and there stabbing to death their sovereign lord in the midst of his guards, and of the assembled crowd.