city of Genoa, where you have never been! Only think how many
new places and lands we shall have seen by the time of our return! We
wish you all good things, but fear our wishes will profit you little,
and are sure my letter will make your mouth water."

On Saturday the 21st the bridal party set out from Pavia, and, leaving
the Certosa on the right, travelled across the Lombard plain to Binasco,
where they spent the night at the feudal castle of the Visconti, the
ruins of which may still be seen on the heights above the little town.
On Sunday morning the procession entered Milan, and the bride was
received by her cousin, Isabella of Aragon, wife of the reigning duke,
who had ridden out to meet her at the suburban church of S. Eustorgio,
where the bones of the martyred friar, S. Pietro Martire, repose in
their shrine of sculptured marble. At the gates Duke Gian Galeazzo and
his uncle met them, followed by a brilliant company of Milanese nobles,
and Lodovico, clad in a gorgeous mantle of gold brocade, rode through
the streets at the side of his youthful bride. A hundred trumpeters
marched before them, filling the air with strains of martial music, and
the crowds, who had assembled from all parts of Lombardy, thronged
around to gaze on the duchess and her daughters, and more especially on
the Moro's bride.

The street decorations that day were on the grandest scale. Lodovico had
given orders that no expense should be spared, and the magnificence of
the pageant amazed the foreign ambassadors and visitors from Mantua and
Ferrara. Not only were the walls and balconies hung with red and blue
satin or brocades, while wreaths of ivy were twined round the columns
and doorways, but one whole street where the armourers had their shops
was lined with effigies of armed warriors on horseback, entirely clad
with chain-armour and plates of damascened steel. "Every one took these
mailed figures to be alive," says Tristan Calco, the admiring chronicler
to whom we owe these details. The procession halted on the _piazza_ in
front of the Castello, and the heralds gave a loud blast of music as the
bride was lifted from her horse, and received under the grand portal by
the duchess-mother, Bona of Savoy, and her two daughters, Bianca Maria
and Anna Sforza. Bona herself had returned to Milan at the French king's
request soon after her son's marriage, and had consented to an outward
reconciliation with her brother-in-law, Lodovico. Her daughter A