en he appeared among them. As for his old
friends and comrades, the poets and scholars of Lodovico's court, their
indignation knew no bounds, Lancinus Curtius hurled bitter epigrams at
his head, and Pistoia held him up to the scorn of the whole world in
some of his finest sonnets. He did not live long to enjoy the reward of
his treachery and it was popularly believed in Italy that he had
poisoned himself in his despair, or put an end to his wretched life by
falling upon his own sword. Even Charon, sang the poet, shuddered when
he heard the traitor's name, and refused to let him enter the gates of
Hades.

When the news of the conquest of Milan reached Lyons, Louis XII. crossed
the Alps without delay. On the 21st of September he was at Vercelli; on
the 26th, at Lodovico's favourite Vigevano; on the 2nd of October he
reached Pavia, where the Marquis of Mantua and the Duke of Ferrara, who
feared the Pope's vengeance and Caesar Borgia's army even more than the
French, came to meet him.

"Duke Ercole and his two sons," wrote the Ferrarese annalist, "are gone
to meet the King of France. As for the Duke of Milan, his name is never
mentioned, and you might think that he had never lived."

On Sunday, the 6th of October, he made his triumphal entry into Milan,
with the Dukes of Ferrara and Savoy riding at his side; the Cardinals
della Rovere and d'Amboise were in front of him; and ambassadors from
all the chief cities of Italy, and a goodly array of princes and nobles,
in his train. Francesco Gonzaga, who had so lately been Duke Lodovico's
guest, was there. And there, too, were men like Caiazzo and Fracassa,
who had eaten and drunk at the Moro's table, and were fighting under his
banner only a few weeks before, and with them one, who was still more
closely associated with Lodovico and his wife by the ties of blood and
friendship--Niccolo da Correggio, the favourite courtier and poet of the
Moro, and the cousin of Beatrice.

Conspicuous among them all by his height and majestic bearing was the
Pope's son, Caesar Borgia, while the king himself made a gallant show in
his long white mantle embroidered with golden lilies over a suit of
royal purple, bearing the ducal cap and sword. Eight Milanese nobles
carried an ermine-lined canopy over his head, and the doctors of the
University of Pavia were there in their scarlet robes, as they appeared
a few short years before at Lodovico's coronation. Fair ladies in gay
attire welcomed the v