much alarmed, and sent daily
bulletins both to his sister-in-law and to her mother at Ferrara. "There
is no fresh news to give you here," he wrote on the 6th of October. "My
whole days are spent at the bedside of my dear wife, endeavouring to
distract her thoughts and amuse her mind as best I can during her
illness."

Isabella, who had intended to return home from Genoa, hurried back to
Milan at the news of her sister's illness, and did not leave her until
she was convalescent. During these weeks Lodovico showed himself the
most devoted and attentive of husbands, and his letters to Isabella are
full of the practical jokes and witty dialogues and repartees with which
he and Messer Galeazzo amused the duchess. The following letter affords
a characteristic specimen of the kind of fooling which these great
Renaissance lords and ladies carried on at the expense of the
half-witted jesters and buffoons who were attached to their different
households:--

"DEAR SISTER AND MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND EXCELLENT LADY,

"You know what good sport we had in the wild boar-hunts at which you
were present this last summer. Poor Mariolo, you remember, could not be
there, first because he was ill at Milan, and afterwards because he was
required to keep my wife company during her illness, and was much
distressed to have been absent from these expeditions, when he heard
that even the king's ambassadors had wounded a wild boar. And he told us
all what great things he would have done, had he only been present. Now
that my dearest wife is better, and begins to be able to go out-of-doors
again, I thought we would have a little fun at his expense. Some wolves
and wild goats having been driven into a wood near La Pecorara, which,
as you know, is about a mile from here, on the way to La Sforzesca,
Cardinal Sanseverino had a common farm pig shut up in the same
enclosure, and the next day we went out hunting, and took Mariolo with
us. While we hunted the wolves and wild goats, we left the pig to him,
and he, taking it for a wild boar, chased it with a great hue and cry
along the woods. If your Highness could only have seen him running after
this pig, you would have died of laughter, the more so that he gallantly
tried to spear it three times over, and only succeeded in touching its
side once. And seeing how proud he was of his prowess, we said to him,
'Don't you know, Mariolo, that you have been hunting a tame pig?' He
stood dumb with astonishment, an