ourir on ne me veult, mais me faire rudesse
Et de liesse me voir bannir. Que dois je plus guerir?"

Or this--

"Je porte en prison pour ma device que je m'arme de patience par force
de peine que l'on me fait pouster" (porter) . .

Again, in large letters among the fragment of red and blue paint, we
read--

"Celui qui ne craint fortune n'est pas bien saige."

Even more pathetic, when we recall the joyous days at Milan and
Vigevano, where Lodovico listened to readings from Dante in Beatrice's
rooms, is the following version of Francesca da Rimini's famous lines:--

"Il n'y au monde plus grande destresse,
Du bon tempts soi souvenir en la tristesse."

At length death brought the desired release. Marino Sanuto briefly
records the fact in the following words: "On the 17th day of May, 1508,
at Loches, Signor Lodovico Sforza, formerly Duke of Milan, who was there
in prison, died as a good Christian with the rites of the Catholic
Church." All we know besides is that his faithful servant, Pier
Francesco, was with him to the end, and closed his eyes in the last
sleep. To this day the place of his burial remains unknown. A local
tradition says that he was interred in the church of Loches at the
entrance of the choir, but a manuscript account of the Sieur Dubuisson's
travels in 1642, preserved in the Mazarin Library, states that Ludovic
Sforza sleeps in the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre on the eastern side of
the church. On his death-bed, it is said, he desired to be buried in the
church of the Dominican friars at Tarascon, but we never hear if his
wishes were carried out, and no trace of his burial is to be found in
this place. On the whole we are inclined to think the most trustworthy
authority on the subject is the Dominican historian of S. Maria delle
Grazie, Padre Gattico. In the history of the convent which he wrote a
hundred and fifty years after the Moro's death, he tells us that the
friars of his convent supplied the duke with means for his unfortunate
attempt to escape, and that this having failed, after his death they
removed his body to Milan, and buried him by the side of his wife,
Duchess Beatrice. This may very well have been effected during the reign
of Lodovico's son Maximilian, who was restored to his father's throne in
1512, and would explain the uncertainty which has always existed at
Loches as to the Moro's grave, and the absence of any inscription to
mark his burial-place.

For Lodovico