r est consommee,
Comme argent vif qui retourne en fumee."

From Lyons the captive duke was removed to Lys Saint-Georges in Berry,
where he remained during the next four years in the charge of Gilbert
Bertrand, the king's old captain of the guard. He was allowed to take
exercise in the precincts of the castle and to fish in the moat.
According to Sanuto, he was not wholly cut off from his friends. "Since
he likes to know what is happening in the world outside, the king allows
him to receive letters and to hear the news." But his health suffered
from the confinement, and in the summer of 1501, he became so ill that
Louis XII., who was hunting in the neighbourhood, sent his doctor,
Maitre Salomon, to see him. The physician was shocked at the prisoner's
altered appearance; his long hair, as we learn from a contemporary
miniature, had turned entirely white, and there were black circles round
his eyes. He sighed constantly, complained of the faithless subjects who
had caused his ruin, and asked eagerly for the latest news of the treaty
with the King of the Romans. Maitre Salomon told the king that he
believed Signor Lodovico was losing his reason, and his account moved
Louis so much that he sent to Milan for one of the duke's favourite
dwarfs, in order to beguile the weary hours of captivity. Meanwhile, in
justice to Maximilian, it must be said that he was untiring in his
efforts to obtain the release of his friend and kinsman. For many years
he steadily refused to grant Louis XII. the investiture of Milan, unless
Lodovico was set at liberty, and repeated his solicitations to this
effect with the most unwearied pertinacity. On this point, however, the
French king was inexorable. He knew the hold which the Moro had retained
on the hearts of his subjects, and would not run the risk of another
rebellion by allowing Lodovico to join his children at Innsbruck. At the
prayer of the Empress Bianca, he released her brother, Ermes Sforza, in
1502, and a year later allowed Ascanio Sforza to return to Rome, at the
request of Cardinal d'Amboise, and give his vote in the papal conclave.
After the accession of his old enemy, Giuliano della Rovere, to the
papal throne, Cardinal Sforza once more attained a high degree of honour
and prosperity, and when he died, in 1505, Julius II. raised the
magnificent monument in the church of S. Maria del Popolo to his memory.
In February, 1504, the German ambassador made another strong appeal to
the