When fear and suspicion sank the scale, Visconti inclined to his wife’s relations of Savoy, who, having no right at all except such as he chose to give them, presented no cause for fear. Or he encouraged the claims of Jacopo Visconti. Osio, in a note, informs us that this Jacopo Visconti was the son of Gabriello, the bastard of Giangaleazzo, and had this been the case Jacopo Visconti would have had a certain claim. But Gabriello left no children, and Jacopo must have been the son of one of the numerous children of Bernabò. Nevertheless he considered himself to have pretensions. When all these had been weighed in the balance and found wanting, there remained the princes of Orleans.
In early life the Duke of Milan had been inclined to France; and he had been a suitor for that Princess Marie d’Anjou, who afterwards married King Charles VII. From 1420 to 1427 the pages of Osio abound in messages and treaties. Then the vexed question of Asti began to embitter his relations with France, and to increase that fatal suspicion which ever made him turn with sudden loathing from his former friends. While his discontent with Anjou was still undecided, the Genoese handed into his custody the enemy of Anjou, the prince of Arragon, taken prisoner at sea. In their suzerain Visconti, the ally of Anjou, the Genoese imagined that they had found a sure custodian for Arragon. But they had not reckoned upon the personal charm of Alfonso the Magnanimous, nor upon the capricious indifference of Visconti. Young, handsome, engaging, fearless, their chivalrous captive won the heart of his timid jailer, and easily turned his fluctuating policy from Anjou towards Arragon. Visconti suddenly deserted his own subjects, released Alfonso without consulting the Genoese, and supported him upon the throne of Naples.
With some thought in his heart, doubtless, of the success of Alfonso, Dunois turned his steps to Milan. He also was handsome, persuasive, rhetorical; and if no longer young, his comely head was encircled by the aureole of heroic victory. But Dunois lacked the enthusiasm, the spontaneity, that, in Arragon, had warmed for a moment the numb and chilly heart of the Duke of Milan. Dunois was as cold, as sceptical, as wise, as worldly as himself. His flowers of speech made no real effect upon the weary Duke, who, to get rid of him, made, doubtless, some magnificent promise for the future; for Dunois did not insist on his demand for Asti, but returned almost immediately to France, hoping to settle matters by the friendly intervention of the Emperor Frederic; but at that time the customary _malentendu_ as to the occupation of Alsace estranged France and Germany, and Frederic declined to interfere with the projects of the Duke of Milan.