English readers know what to expect when an ambitious uncle, in the Middle Ages, leaves two little Princes in the Tower. But no midnight assassin cut short the days of Giangaleazzo and his brother Ermes. They were more useful to their uncle, living—at least until he had made his own position surer: for at present he only ruled in Milan as Tutor and Regent of the little Duke. But, by whatever title, he ruled effectually, and soon he rid his palace of the tearful and frivolous presence of Madame Bonne, whom he exiled from her duchy “for immorality,” and who carried her inept remonstrances and her tarnished honour to find a none too chivalrous asylum at the court of her brother-in-law, Louis XI. of France, a man impatient of unsuccessful women.
Meanwhile Lodovico il Moro flourished in Milan. Under his cultured and dignified rule it became a magical city, a capital of masterpieces. There in 1483, Leonardo da Vinci took up his abode, cast his bronze statue of Francesco Sforza, painted pictures, and founded a school of Lombard painters, little less exquisite, mysterious, and sensual than himself. The Choir of Singers, whom Galeazzo Maria Sforza had brought across the Alps, increased, and the singing and playing of Milan became a thing of note. Temples and palaces sprang up as by enchantment; and learned humanists—grave Romans, bearded Greeks, astute Orientals—from all the centres of knowledge in the world, came to lecture on law, science, and the classics, in brilliant Milan. Nor was the Court of Venus, says Corio, less distinguished than the Court of Minerva. “All were willing to concede their best and fairest to the Court of Cupid; fathers their daughters, husbands their wives, brothers their sisters.” And the laxity of Lombard manners which had scandalized the very Court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, in 1471, was not less abandoned, not less luxurious, although more natural and freer from cruelty under the sceptre of the Regent Lodovico who appears at the head of this princely retinue, a man majestic, suave, omniscient, as any Duke of Shakespeare’s plays.
And yet the real Duke was seldom seen, seldom heard. It was polite to suppose him still a child. None the less every one knew he had been born in the year 1469, amid incredible rejoicings; and many had seen the great Lorenzo de’ Medici when he came to the christening, and had looked on the magnificent necklace of diamonds which he had given the Duchess. “Ah, you shall be godfather to all my children!” the Duke Galeazzo Maria had cried with cordial _naïveté_. And now—ah, Time’s revenges!—the Duke was murdered, the Duchess in exile, and the babe whom all men had welcomed—a prisoner rather than a ward in the hands of the ambitious Regent!