ple of this city, and by the women quite
as much as by the men, which may well be a great consolation to your
Excellency, I must tell you how above all others, Signore Messer
Galeazzo di Sanseverino has both by his words and deeds, as well as by
his demonstrations of sorrow, given admirable expression to the
affection which he had for the duchess, and has taken care to make known
to every one the virtues and goodness of that most illustrious Madonna.
All of which I have felt it my duty to tell your Excellency, in the
hope that it may help to alleviate your sorrow, praying you to maintain
the same fortitude that you have always shown hitherto.

"To whose favour I ever commend myself,

"Your Excellency's servant,
ANTONIUS COSTABILIS.[67]

Milan, January 3, 1497."

So, by the light of a thousand torches, at the close of the short
winter's day, the long procession of mourners bore Duchess Beatrice to
her last resting-place under Bramante's cupola, in the church of Our
Lady. It was the duke's pleasure that his dearly loved wife should rest
there, before the altar where she had often worshipped, by the side of
the young daughter whom they had both loved so well. Only a year or two
before, the people of Milan had seen her enter those doors in the bloom
of her youthful beauty and the joy of her proud young motherhood to give
thanks for the birth of her first-born son. But yesterday they had
watched her moving among them, full of life and charm; now they saw her
lying there in her gorgeous brocades and jewelled necklace, with her
eyes closed in death and the dark locks curling over her marble brow.

It was a tragedy which might well melt the heart of the bravest man and
move the sternest to tears. No wonder that men like Galeazzo and the
Marchesino, who had shared Beatrice's pleasures, and had seen her so
lately foremost in the chase and gayest in dance and song, wept when
they saw her lying there cold and lifeless. As the chroniclers one and
all tell us, "Such grief had never been known before in Milan."

In Ferrara, the home of Beatrice's childhood, where she was loved both
for her own and for her mother's sake, the sorrow was scarcely less.

"On Wednesday, the 4th of January," writes the diarist, "came the news
of the death of Beatrice, Duchess of Milan. And the duke was very sad,
and so were all the people. And on the 12th, Duke Ercole att