uman and lovable. A year or two passes, and we see her,
royally arrayed in brocade and jewels, standing up in the great council
hall of Venice, to plead her husband's cause before the Doge and
Senate. Later on we find her sharing her lord's counsels in court and
camp, receiving king and emperor at Pavia or Vigevano, fascinating the
susceptible heart of Charles VIII. by her charms, and amazing Kaiser
Maximilian by her wisdom and judgment in affairs of state. And then
suddenly the music and dancing, the feasting and travelling, cease, and
the richly coloured and animated pageant is brought to an abrupt close.
Beatrice dies, without a moment's warning, in the flower of youth and
beauty, and the young duchess is borne to her grave in S. Maria delle
Grazie amid the tears and lamentations of all Milan. And with her death,
the whole Milanese state, that fabric which Lodovico Sforza had built up
at such infinite cost and pains, crumbles into ruin. Fortune, which till
that hour had smiled so kindly on the Moro and had raised him to giddy
heights of prosperity, now turned her back upon him. In three short
years he had lost everything--crown, home, and liberty--and was left to
drag out a miserable existence in the dungeons of Berry and Touraine.

"And when Duchess Beatrice died," wrote the poet, Vincenzo Calmeta,
"everything fell into ruin, and that court, which had been a joyous
paradise, was changed into a black Inferno."

Then Milan and her people become a prey to the rude outrages of French
soldiery. Leonardo's great horse was broken in pieces by Gascon archers,
and the Castello, "which had once held the finest flower of the whole
world, became," in Castiglione's words, "a place of drinking-booths and
dung-hills." The treasures of art and beauty stored up within its walls
were destroyed by barbarous hands, and all that brilliant company was
dispersed and scattered abroad. Artists and poets, knights and
scholars--Leonardo and Bramante, Galeazzo and Niccolo--were driven out,
and went their way each in a different direction, to seek new homes and
other patrons. But the memory of the young duchess--the _Donna beata_ of
Pistoja and Visconti's song--lived for many a year in the hearts of her
loyal servants, Castiglione enshrined her name in his immortal pages,
Ariosto celebrated her virtues in the cantos of his "Orlando Furioso,"
and far on in the new century, grey-headed scholars spoke of her as
"_la piu zentil Donna d'Italia_"--th