mission from the duke to ask for his widowed
sister's hand in marriage, and as well as for that of his youthful
daughter Leonora on behalf of the young Count of Pavia. The duke wrote
back that he had never seen the doctor, and that the whole was a
fabrication. As he informed Chiara, he had not the smallest intention of
marrying a second time, although he had already received proposals to
this effect, both from Naples and Germany. And, by way of
peace-offering, he sent her a beautiful little _niello_ pax, as a
specimen of the work of his Milanese goldsmiths, and as a proof that he
placed himself altogether at her service. In return, Chiara sent him her
cordial thanks, and informed him that her brother had given orders for
the instant arrest of the mischievous doctor, and would see that he was
delivered into the duke's hands.

Another princess, who was in constant correspondence with the Moro
during these last years, was his niece Caterina Sforza, the famous
Madonna of Forli. Long ago, he had helped her against the conspirators
who had killed her first husband and besieged her in the Rocca, and ten
years before, Galeazzo di Sanseverino had won his first laurels at
Forli. Since those days, Lodovico had been a good friend to this warlike
lady in all her perpetual quarrels with her subjects and neighbours. "I
should be ready to drown myself, were it not for the trust that I place
in your Excellency," Caterina wrote to her uncle in 1496. Now that she
had aroused the wrath of Venice by her alliance with Florence, and that
Romagna was actually invaded by a Venetian force, the duke sent first
Fracassa and then the Count of Caiazzo to her help. In her gratitude she
called the infant son born of her third marriage with Giovanni de'
Medici, Lodovico, a name which he afterwards changed, to become famous
in history as Giovanni _delle bande nere_. But this _virago_, as
Machiavelli named the gallant lady of Forli, was by no means easy to
deal with, and she was constantly appealing to Lodovico to settle her
disputes. One day she welcomed Fracassa as a delivering angel, the next
she quarrelled with him violently, and turned a deaf ear to the Moro's
advice to overcome the Condottiere's rudeness by fair words and gentle
courtesy. After summarily rejecting his suggestion of a Gonzaga bride
for her son, and informing him that she was about to accept the Count of
Caiazzo's proposals for her daughter Bianca, she changed her mind,
declaring the