sser Ambrogio da Rosate, the chief court physician
and astrologer, had been fixed for Tuesday, the 17th of January, this
being the day of Mars, and therefore especially propitious for the
marriage of a lord, who above all things desired the birth of a son.
Throughout his life Il Moro, like many of his contemporaries, had a
blind belief in the stars, and placed the most implicit confidence in
Messer Ambrogio, who was said to have saved his life during his
dangerous illness at Vigevano three years before, and who had been
lately called upon to cast the horoscope of Pope Innocent VIII. at the
earnest entreaty of His Holiness. "Maestro Ambrogio has been suddenly
called to fly to Vigevano," wrote Giacomo Trotti to Ferrara one day in
1489, "because he is a professor of astrology, by which this excellent
Signor orders all his actions." The date of Lodovico's journeys, the
hour of all important court ceremonies, and even the movements of his
armies in time of war, were regulated by the course of the stars. Messer
Ambrogio, consequently, became a most important personage at the court
of Milan. "Without him," wrote Beatrice's maid of honour to the
Marchioness Isabella, "nothing can be done here."

The beautiful park and gardens at Pavia lay deep in snow, their lakes
and fountains were all frozen over, but there was plenty to interest and
amuse the visitors within the walls of this great Castello, of which
they had heard so much, and which was said to be the grandest of royal
houses in the whole of Europe. Three or four generations of masters had
been employed by successive Visconti dukes to rear this glorious fabric,
which in its palmy days must have been a noble monument of Lombard
architecture. The long colonnades of low round arches went back to
Romanesque days and the times of the first Visconti lords of Pavia; the
Gothic windows of the banqueting-hall and upper stories had been
finished in the reign of the great Giangaleazzo, and were enriched with
slender marble shafts and exquisite terra-cotta mouldings similar to
those that we admire to-day in the cloisters of the Certosa. The vaulted
halls were painted with the finest ultramarine and gold, and the arms of
Sforzas and Viscontis, the lilies of France and the red cross of Savoy,
appeared on the groined roof between planets and stars of raised gold.
The vast Sala della Palla, where the dukes and their courtiers indulged
in their favourite pastime of "pall-mall," which Burckha