ut none the
less, I believe that he will not continue long in prosperity, for God is
just, and will punish him because he is a traitor and never keeps faith
with any one."

The Florentine Guicciardini moralized in much the same strain, saying
that Lodovico publicly vaunted himself to be the son of Fortune, "little
remembering the inconstancy of human fame," and flattered himself that
he would always be able to govern the affairs of Italy, "with his
industrie to turn and winde the minds of every one. This fond
persuasion he could not dissemble, neither in himself, nor in his
peoples, in so much that Milan day and night was replenished with voices
vaine and glorious, celebrating with verses Latine and vulgar and with
publicke orations full of flatterie, the wonderfull wisedom of Lodowike
Sforce, on the which they made to depend the peace and warre of Italy,
exalting his name even to the third heaven."

In those days the bard of Pistoja proclaimed that there was one God in
heaven and one Moro upon earth, and sang the praises of this great and
divine Duca, who alone could open and close the doors of the Temple of
Janus and make peace or war in Italy, while Gaspare Visconti extolled
the talents and virtues of Duchess Beatrice as surpassing those of all
the most illustrious women of antiquity. Then Leonardo designed that
famous series of allegories in his sketch-book, in which Duke Lodovico
is represented alternately as Fortune, driving the squalid figure of
Poverty away with a golden wand, and throwing his ducal mantle over a
helpless youth who flies before the ugly hag; or as supreme Wisdom,
wearing the spectacles which can pierce through all disguises, and
pronouncing sentence between Envy on the one hand and Justice on the
other. Then Bramante painted those frescoes on the walls of the Castello
of Milan, in which the Moro was seen crowned and seated on his throne,
under a stately portico, administering justice, with four councillors
and two pages at his side, while the criminal trembled before him, and
officers of state held the scales and prepared to carry out the
sentence. And then, too, somewhere else in the palace, an unknown
Lombard master painted that fresco of Italy as a fair queen, with the
names of the chief cities embroidered on her robes, and the Moro
standing at her side, brushing the dust off her skirts with the
_scopetta_ or little broom, that favourite emblem which appears in so
many illuminated books of