o thus bestowed, Lodovico Maria went calmly about the
business of governing, like one who did not mean to relinquish the
regency save to become duke. But it happened that a boy was born to the
young prisoners at Pavia, whereupon, spurred perhaps into activity by
this parenthood and stimulated by the thought that they had now a son's
interests to fight for as well as their own, they made appeal to King
Ferrante of Naples that he should enforce his grandson-in-law's rights
to the throne of Milan. King Ferrante could desire nothing better, for
if his grandchild and her husband reigned in Milan, and by his favour
and contriving, great should be his influence in the North of Italy.
Therefore he stood their friend.

Matters were at this stage when Alexander VI ascended the papal throne.

This election gave Ferrante pause, for, as we have seen, he had schemed
for a Pope devoted to his interests, who would stand by him in the
coming strife, and his schemes were rudely shaken now. Whilst he was
still cogitating the matter of his next move, the wretched Francesco
Cibo (Pope Innocent's son) offered to sell the papal fiefs of Cervetri
and Anguillara, which had been made over to him by his father, to
Gentile Orsini--the head of his powerful house. And Gentile purchased
them under a contract signed at the palace of Cardinal Giuliano della
Rovere, on September 3, for the sum of forty thousand ducats advanced
him by Ferrante.

Alexander protested strongly against this illegal transaction, for
Cervetri and Anguillara were fiefs of the Church, and neither had Cibo
the right to sell nor Orsini the right to buy them. Moreover, that they
should be in the hands of a powerful vassal of Naples such as Orsini
suited the Pope as little as it suited Lodovico Maria Sforza. It stirred
the latter into taking measures against the move he feared Ferrante
might make to enforce Gian Galeazzo's claims.

Lodovico Maria went about this with that sly shrewdness so
characteristic of him, so well symbolized by his mulberry badge--a
humorous shrewdness almost, which makes him one of the most delightful
rogues in history, just as he was one of the most debonair and cultured.
He may indeed be considered as one of the types of the subtle, crafty,
selfish politician that was the ideal of Macchiavelli.

You see him, then, effacing the tight-lipped, cunning smile from his
comely face and pointing out to Venice with a grave, sober countenance
how little it can s