Lodovico

“ The Milanese once more enjoyed a period of peace and prosperity, and Lodovico was able to devote himself to his favourite pursuits, the encouragement of learning and of the fine arts. Even at the most anxious and busiest times, in the midst of the war with Venice and the negotiations for the league against her, Lodovico had found time to carry on his brother's schemes for the decoration of the Castello of Milan, and to help forward the works of the Duomo and the Certosa of Pavia. ”

“ You are more fortunate than I am.”
“Why he thinks he is,” said Beatrice. “I have never known a man so pleased with himself. Show him all that you have, my lord, and he will say, ‘I thank you; I had rather be Silvain de St. Lo.’”
“He is happy,” said Lodovico.
“Oh, happy!” she cried. “But why does he come to Milan? Did ever you meet a man in your house who wanted nothing?”
“There is no such man in the world,” said Lodovico.
“At least I have never seen him,” Silvain smiled. “Sir, my lady jeers at me. I am the greediest soul alive. I have sought fortune and honor all my days.” ”

“ Sir, I obey the mandate,
And will return to Venice. Hence, avaunt!
Exit
Desdemona.
Cassio shall have my place. And, sir, tonight,
I do entreat that we may sup together.
You are welcome, sir, to Cyprus. Goats and monkeys!
Exit.
LODOVICO. Is this the noble Moor whom our full Senate
Call all in all sufficient? This the nature
Whom passion could not shake? whose solid virtue
The shot of accident nor dart of chance
Could neither graze nor pierce?
IAGO. He is much changed.
LODOVICO. Are his wits safe? Is he not light of brain?
IAGO. He's that he is. ”

“ It is Lodovico who administers the state, treats of war and peace, confirms the laws, grants privileges, imposes taxes, hears petitions, and raises money. Everything is in his power, while we are left without friends or money, and are reduced to live as private persons. Not Gian Galeazzo, but Lodovico, is recognized as lord of the kingdom. He places prefects in the castles, raises military forces, appoints magistrates, and discharges all the duties of a prince. He is, in fact, the true duke. ”

“ Silvain said gently. “I have my fame that I could lay at the feet of God if I die tonight. And my life is not lived yet.”
Lodovico looked at his wife. Lodovico’s thin lips smiled.
“You are right. He wants nothing of you. That is what a woman can not forgive. What will you give him, Beatrice? Death?” He turned to Silvain. “You have made an enemy, sir.” ”

“ Lodovico il Moro frequently rode across to Pavia to take counsel with the wise old statesmanstatesman and learn his views of the world. He went 303indeed so often that the people of Milan began to murmur and to say that Lodovico, recalled by a Ghibelline coup d’étât, was a Guelf in disguise. To reassure them on that head, in the month of October, 1480, Lodovico intimated to Simonetta—not without many apologies—that, in deference to popular prejudice, he must even consent to lose his head. ”

“ Lodovico always remained at his academy in Bologna (excepting for a short visit to his cousin at Rome) , though invited to execute paintings in all parts of the country. He died in 1619, and was interred in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena. The works of Lodovico are numerous in the chapels of Bologna. The most famous are—The “Madonna standing on the moon, with St Francis and St Jerome beside her, attended by a retinue of angels” ”

“ Lodovico particularly wished to honour.
'What can you invent, Messer Leonardo?' Lodovico asked the painter. 'I want something no one has ever seen before; the king must be tired of grand shows, and he can get them at home. Of course we shall be obliged to give [293] him a splendid reception for the sake of our own credit, but I should like something besides, which he can remember.'
So Messer Leonardo thought and thought, and the end of his thinking was that when the King of France entered Milan, a lion, life size, advanced to meet him, and touched the king's breast with his own. ”

“ Lodovico's proposal should be rejected both by Florence and the King of Naples. So strained was the situation of Italian affairs that Lodovico saw in the repulse a menace to his own usurped authority. Feeling himself isolated among the princes of his country, rebuffed by the Medici, and coldly treated by the King of Naples, he turned in his anxiety to France, and advised the young king, Charles VIII., to make good his claim upon the Regno. It was a bold move to bring the foreigner thus into Italy ”

“ And he looked keenly at Lodovico. “I do not take another man’s woman.”
“She has a rich inheritance,” Lodovico purred. “She is worth taking. Who is Lord of Pavia and stands by me will be a great man in Italy in the war that comes. When I march with the King of France on Florence and Naples, the Lord of Pavia has much to win.”
“I ride to win honor and fortune,” Silvain said and he looked at Lodovico and looked down. “But she lives for Bonivard.”
“What is Bonivard?” Beatrice cried. “My page is more of a man. If she is worth anything, she is worth something better.” ”

“ He was dependent for all supplies upon the Moro, who kept absolute control of the immense Sforza treasure. The birth of his heir was but scantily celebrated, while that of Lodovico’s a little later was made the occasion of the most pompous rejoicings. The halls of the sovereigns in the Corte Ducale were gradually deserted, while Lodovico and Beatrice’s apartments in the Rocchetta were thronged. The self-seeking courtiers knew well where their devotion was most profitably placed. Besides, it was melancholy in the chambers of a sickly prince and a sad princess ever brooding over her wrongs. ”

“ His honest nature and kindly actions made him singularly beloved, and a contemporary describes him as the most learned of good men, and the best of learned men; while his intimate friend, the great printer, Aldo Manuzio, has immortalized his memory in the beautiful epistle in which he dedicates the Moralia of Plutarch to this man, whose name, he prays, may go down to future ages linked with his own. Both of these secretaries proved able assistants in the great revival of art and learning which is Lodovico's lasting title to fame. ”

“ Beatrice and Lodovico looked at each other, and his dark face smiled and she shrugged her shoulders and nodded and turned with a sneer on her lip to watch Silvain.
“The fair Clarissa lives for Bonivard,” Lodovico purred. “It is unfortunate. But she is young and he will not live forever.” Silvain checked and turned. “Men do not live forever in prison. Men who are in the way.” ”

“ Silvain said gently.
“And I have done nothing? Is that it? Why, child, the world will talk of Beatrice of Milan when you are dead and dust. I have had power over men. But let me be what you say. I have done nothing, I am nothing! Then in God’s name why do you come to serve me?”
“I serve those who need, lady. For the joy of the venture and the honor.”
She flung out her white arms and pointed at him:
“He saves others! himself he will not save!” And she laughed. “A saint you are, not a knight nor a man.”
It was there or thereabouts that Lodovico came in. ”

“ These words, in the mouth of nephew and uncle, are the motto on a miniatured page in the History of Francesco Sforza, by Gio. Simonetta, printed in 1490. The picture shows Lodovico and Gian Galeazzo kneeling on the edge of a lake; in the midst of the water a ship with a youth in it and a Moor at the helm, and in the background a mulberry-tree (moro) spreading wide branches. This allegory—one of many such that we read of—may have expressed some real affection as well as self-exaltation in Lodovico, though after-events give it a strange irony. ”

“ Under these circumstances, old King Ferrante, becoming desperate, made a last effort to win over Lodovico to his side, and implored him to use his influence to stop the French monarch, warning him that the tide of events might in the end prove too [Pg 223] strong for him. "The time will come," replied Lodovico proudly, "when all Italy will turn to me and pray to be delivered from the coming evils." In his anxiety to recover the Moro's friendship, the old king even thought of coming to Genoa himself to meet his granddaughter's husband, and arrive at some agreement. ”

“ This you must know has been thought of, but this city is not inclined to undertake the enterprise of Sarzana during the next few years, but to temporise until our affairs are more prosperous, for we are quite aware that the Lord Lodovico has made an alliance with Genoa, and that we could not count on help from him. The Lord Lodovico shows that he does not understand the spirit that rules this city, which is this: When we have embarked on an enterprise we continue with ardour, when we are at peace it needs a great effort to make us undertake one. ”

“ Lodovico now took leave of his faithful servants, and solemnly charged Bernardino da Corte to hold the Castello as a sacred trust. "As long as the Rocca holds out, I know that I shall return; but when that surrenders, the house of Sforza is doomed." With these words he kissed the castellan on the cheek, and, mounted on a black horse, in the long black mantle which he always wore since his wife's death, he rode out, accompanied by his chief senators to the Porta Vercellina. ”

“ And were the Carracci such? separate the precept from the practice, the artist from the teacher; and the Carracci are in possession of my submissive homage. Lodovico, far from implicitly subscribing to a master’s dictates, was the sworn pupil of nature. To a modest style of form, to a simplicity eminently fitted for those subjects of religious gravity which his taste preferred, he joined that solemnity of hue, that sober twilight, the air of cloistered meditation, which you have so often heard recommended as the proper tone of historic [82] colour. ”

“ The demeanour of Signor Lodovico towards his wife, all he said and thought of her, was narrowly watched by Giacomo Trotti, and duly repeated in his letters to Ferrara. For the present this was eminently satisfactory. "Signor Lodovico," writes the ambassador during the wedding festivities at Milan, "has nothing but the highest praise both for his wife and the [Pg 77] Marchesana. He is never tired of saying how much pleasure he takes in their company. ”

“ In these communications between the empress and her family there is no trace whatever of any ill-will to Lodovico and Beatrice, far less any suspicion that her uncle had hastened her brother's death, although some chroniclers allude to a report that Maximilian's wife held Lodovico to be guilty of this crime. The fact that some rumour of this kind had reached the imperial court seems probable from the Latin letter which Lodovico himself addressed in December, 1494, to the Bishop of Brixen, one of the delegates who were afterwards sent to Milan with the imperial privilege. ”

“ I am ready to do whatever the Republic desires. But there is no time to waste; we must act at once."
All eyes now turned to Lodovico as the only man who could save Italy from the French invaders. The emperor and the Venetians had been urging him to declare war against France for the last eight weeks, and now Ferrante of Aragon, in his despair, appealed to him by the Sforza blood that flowed in both their veins to deliver him and his kingdom from the dominion of the foreigner. ”

“ One of the novice Gerard's self-imposed penances was to receive Lodovico kindly, feeling secretly as to a slimy serpent.
Never was self-denial better bestowed; and like most rational penances, it soon became no penance at all. At first the pride and complacency, with which the assassin gazed on the one life he had saved, was perhaps as ludicrous as pathetic; but it is a great thing to open a good door in a heart. ”

“ It is not for nothing that the name of il Moro—the Moor—given to the dark-skinned boy in his childhood, has clung to him through history; it shows the conviction of his contemporaries and of posterity that it fitted not only his bodily appearance, but the complexion of his soul.
By his actions he must be judged. In the Italy of the Quattrocento, to do evil that good might come was excellent morality. The best men practised it, and differed only from the worst in the ends they pursued. Lodovico’s usurpation of power had its immediate justification in the salvation of the State. ”

“ He answered Lodovico that he preferred to keep the fortresses, at least until after his return from Naples. The Duke of Milan was a grave and modest man, quiet in manner and majestic, never irascible or angry; he feigned to agree with his ally the King of France. Yes, it would certainly be wiser for Charles to keep the passes; and, to add a point to his conciliation, he remembered that Milan owed the King the 30,000 ducats due for the investiture of Genoa. ”

“ The lists were set in the tilt-yard, where under a canopy sat the Lord Lodovico and his lady, Beatrice, and their court. At one end a triple tent was hung with three shields, for the order of the fight was that three of Lodovico’s captains defied all who came against them. At the other end gathered those ready to venture, and heralds took their names and ranks. Each man might choose which shield his squire should strike, which captain he would challenge and attack. When Silvain gave his name he asked which of the three was accounted the best knight. ”

“ All Lodovico's tact and courtesy were needed to allay the storm, and when at length Merula died in 1494, the duke ordered the immediate destruction of all the papers relating to this deplorable controversy, of which all parties, he felt, had [Pg 130] good reason to be ashamed. The remodelling of the library of the Castello di Pavia was another important work which was carried out in the year 1492, by Tristano Calco the historian and kinsman of the chief secretary, under the eye of Lodovico himself, while he and Beatrice spent the summer at Pavia. ”