Sforza. A story of Milan

Chapter I. The School Of The Swoed

A fine breezy July morning had dawned upon Milan. At the market prevailed a hubbub of sounds that had begun with the arrival of the earliest contadini : before the inns, ostlers and ser vants chatted and laughed as they worked ; at the half-finished Duomo, the people streamed in and out, pausing in the cool, incensed air of the aisles to touch a finger-tip in holy water ; on the piazza d'armi, a regiment of gaudily-attired soldiers marched and wheeled with drumbeat and bugle note ; and along the quiet banks of the little Olona some boatmen towed and punted their barges with fantastic snatches of song. The year 1499 had opened with lowering aspect. Louis the Twelfth of France, eager to efface the discredit of his arms, had avowed his purpose of scourging Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, for a scheming adroitness which, five years before, had ■> SFORZA. caused the military misfortunes of Charles the Eighth.

To secure the advantage of a diversion upon his subtle antagonist, he had signed a treaty with the Venetians, whereby they were to make an irruption upon the frontier of Lombardy, while the French army, composed of knights, arquebusiers, Swiss pikemen, and an artillery train of thirty bronze cannon, should pass the Alps and cleave its way to Milan. The approach of so formidable a host might have gladdened the Milanese with the prospect of quick riddance of their usurping duke, but for the dread of men whose cruelties had touched half Italy with suffering ; and so, as suc cessive couriers announced the gathering of the French in Dauphine, and their concentration in Piedmont, the fickle populace knew not whether to tremble or to rejoice. Walking leisurely along one of the principal streets, with an eye to any bright face that might peep from gable or carved balcony, went a young man named Hermes Sforza, whose air and dress betokened him to be of the luxurious aristocracy.

His costume was of striped blue and white satin, with a cap set with diamonds on his head ; at his left wrist tinkled three slender bracelets, and his long hair was heavily perfumed and bound in a gauze net, after the fashion of Spain. He turned into an unfrequented by-way, down which an indi vidual of much his own attire, though of more advanced age, came sauntering. A smile illumined Sforza's face at the sight, and, quickening his step, he saluted the other with patronizing effusion. " Is it indeed you, Messer Bernardino ? " he began, speaking his native Italian with a Spanish accent, which was the fashionable affectation of the period. " I am glad of our meeting ; you shall tell me the news ; you know I have been back but a day, there fore return a step with me ; we will talk as we go. Narvaez awaits me — how I long to cross rapiers with him again!

" The individual thus addressed halted at the greeting, and answered with a smile : " You look jovial as ever, Hermes ; the moist English climate does not dampen the spirits, it seems." " I feel dull this morning ; -I have been out the livelong night." " And the little Rucellai with hazel eyes ? " " Tush, Bernardino, a truce to thy nonsense ! " " So you are going now to your fencing master's ; and after that ? " "After that we shall breakfast together at the Osteria del Povero Diavolo — you know it not '? Why. they tell me 'tis a new cookshop opened since I left, where everything is clone to perfection in the Spanish style." " My time is brief ; I but meant to refresh my self with a breath of air." SFORZA " Diamine ! you must eat ; I will hasten my exercise. I have a hundred questions to ask, as all people have after separation."

" Are you, too, going to the army ? " inquired Bernardino, turning to retrace his steps. " For the present, no ; I am attached to the military household. Doubtless we shall all look the French in the eyes before the next Ottobrata. But what of that ! Tell me rather how to forget England. Maledetto! think of a whole month there." " Is it true that in London the red-haired girls play games wherein they kiss the men ? " inquired Bernardino, casting his eyes upon his companion's bangles and effeminate dress. " Possibly, but not with strangers, and I was always a stranger among them." "But at Carnival?" " They buffet one another's faces with great gloves. But what carnival will you have when from Christmas to Easter the fog is so dense you would not know there were church towers did not you hear the tinkling of the chimes ?

I cannot yet shake off the impression of those grimy streets, of the rainy mornings, of the dark, solemn afternoons. And the faces at the diamond-paned windows! Always the weazened faces of old scriveners and money-changers, poring over their books and fum bling their hoards." " They must needs drink well in such a cli mate ? " " Drink ! 'Tis a country which makes no wine. They serve at their bauquets a dry Xeres which they call sack, and the people play the fool in their cups over a frothing yellowish liquid." " You talk as though you had been homesick." " I had the longing for Italy, and that, you know, is a malady incurable abroad. I thought of the silver and gold of our sky, of the sunset flush on our mountains, of my favorite haunts " "And somewhat of the little Eucellai — no? " "Jest not of her, or my good fortune will fly away."

" Your good fortune delights me. And when is the wedding feast ? " " I spoke with her last night. Her father's house was filled with dancers. I have known the old man for years, — who knows not the banker Eucellai? I danced a moresca with her ; we strolled among tapestries and paintings ; she offered me a sherbet ; I coaxed her to accept a bracelet from my wrist ; we walked down a terrace where were statues and fountains and colored lanterns, and where a com pany of lutes were playing the sweetest love songs, and oh, Bernardino! it came over me that I might meet my death in this accursed war ! " " And that is all ? " " Hark. The dance over, the guests scattered, SFORZA . the house closed, and, the night listening, I came with my mandolin and filled the air with song." " You never used to sing."

" No ; but love inspired me and gave me a voice ; do you remember that quaint old passion ate refrain of the Sunbeam and the Bose ? " " You are too sleek and too well fed, my Hermes, to be a soulful minstrel." " So thought old Rucellai. A casement opened, and I recognized his voice. ' Begone,' he cried, 'if you are human you should have some compassion ; if you are a devil I will presently discharge an arquebuse your way." " And the girl ? " " Gave no sign. So, with the daughter asleep and the father awake, I betook me to a trattoria, where a dozen we know were supping, and pres ently in came a bevy of girls who danced for us — and here I am." Their talk was interrupted by the leisurely round of a town-crier. He stopped near them, rang a bell, and, pointing to a handcuffed prisoner, re cited the following words in a monotonous chant, while the culprit, a miserable starveling, with every token of degradation, listened intently, as though each repetition of the sentence brought a new horror : " Be it known, that this man, Agosto Felice, a Jew, having been convicted of sweating the public moneys, and his goods forfeited, is condemned to be branded on the face and hands to-morrow."

The knot of idlers, that followed the trembling criminal throughout the city, passed on, and Hermes and Bernardino resumed their way uncon cerned. " Had the duke news yesterday from the army ? " asked the latter. " I saw my uncle but briefly ; he looked pale and troubled, though, in answer to the only ques tion I durst put to him, he said that all goes for the best. Nevertheless, twenty-five days since, as I was leaving London, it was told me by a secretary to the Pope's legate that the Venetians would assail us from behind. And at Como a rumor had it that their scappoli and stradiotes are already concentrated to march. Can such evil tidings be true ? " " 'Tis but the accustomed bluster of the Vene tians. Our forces assemble at Asti ; it is to be a defensive campaign until our autumn fevers ex haust the French.

At the worst, cannot our towns stand siege ? If we but keep the French at arms' length for the summer, we shall make them eat bitter bread with cold hands." They had now reached the abode of Narvaez, the celebrated fencing-master. There was an enclosure at one side where, in summer, he received his pu pils ed fresco, and here he had marked out upon the SFORZA. brick pavement the geometric lines which served as a basis for the theories of his school. From one extremity to the other ran parallels, along which, said a naive explanation, two adversaries might travel without changing distance. Further on was an illustration, by footmarks, of the successive positions occupied in gaining the advantage of place and stroke by traversing. On the wall was the outline of a human figure, upon which were drawn, for the consideration of the beginner, lines showing the relation of angles to arcs, of tangents, and chords to their circle.

Four hundred years ago every master of fence advocated a system developed by his own favorite methods. If he could afford the cost, he had copied for sale, in manuscript, his treatise upon staccadoes and imbrocatas and mandritas, mixed with disquisitions upon self-defence as approved by divine law, and on the commendable pastime of the sword for the confusion of heretics and the admiration of fair women. Some adepts offered to sell a botte secrete, a thrust that would surely reach the adversary, while others devoted themselves to pure theory, such as the exchange of compliments which Spanish etiquette provided before a duel ; thence leading the scholar to the habitual study of every swordsman, whether stout, tall, muscular, nervous, choleric, or phlegmatic, with the inferen tial reasoning that such an opponent should be met with tactics violent, measured, sudden, or patient — and finally passing into philosophical digressions and the recital of Scriptural texts.

That, in spite of such drawbacks, the Spaniards should have been accounted the most formidable duellists of the sixteenth centur}-, was due to the strength required for the manipulation of their heavy rapier which its incessant use in practice developed, and to the habit of extreme coolness which resulted from unflagging attention to arti ficial method. Both these qualities were possessed in their perfection by Narvaez, the renowned fencing teacher, who advanced to greet Hermes and Ber nardino as a servant admitted them into the enclosure. All Milan knew the young Spanish iwordsman by sight. He had come to Italy when a stripling, and, since his father's death, had con tinued alone in the exercise of the family profession. The elder Narvaez had served his appren ticeship in arms when, as a boy, he stood by his father on the trembling rampart of Coustantinople, and saw Paleologus cast aside the purple robe, that his body might not be recognized by the Sara cens as that of the last of the Boman Cæsars.

His son inherited his deftness with the rapier, and the nerve of the professional swordsman. He had a serious face, a soft, musical voice, unusual in a Spaniard, thick clustering hair, an earnest SFORZA. manner in talking, and a smile as sweet as a girl's. His features were delicate, and under his dark skin glowed a ruddy flush. He was a favorite with all; with Hermes chiefly for his incomparable swordsmanship, and partly, be it confessed, because the fencer loved dainty dishes as much as though they were not contrary to perfect training. Half a dozen times, in bygone days, had Hermes taken him to one of his favorite resorts, where they had feasted magnificently, to the Spaniard's delight and to the promotion of a comradeship which in olden times often existed between a crack fencing master and his patron.

But, above all, he was a favorite with the women — too much so for his own comfort. He declared the pursuit of the sex to be inconsistent with the pure science of the sword, and neither art nor cajolery nor amorous token could move his indif ference. His most demonstrative admirer was a handsome widow of thirty, with ample revenue and a tendency to embonpoint. This dame had taken advantage of the prevalent taste among ladies for fencing, to gain a more particular ac quaintance than the Spaniard usually permitted; but when she presumed upon this privilege with a sudden embrace and an impassioned declaration, the cold swordsman turned from her rosy face with a vow that he would never cross rapiers with her again. "Good morning, Narvaez," said Hermes, "I present you to Messer Bernardino Corte, Governor of the Castle ; doubtless he has seen you fence in public," he added, as the Spaniard raised a Moor ish cap and bowed to his visitors with the grave courtesy of the profession.

" The maestro has perhaps never noticed my face," observed Bernardino, "though, Narvaez, I have often watched you, — the last time at that famous assalto wherein you vanquished the French champion." The fencer begged Bernardino to seat himself at a bench embowered in vines, whence, while awaiting Sforza's return, he could observe the les son progressing between an assistant and a youth receiving his first notions of arms. Bernardino glanced at the opposite wall, whereon was painted the maxim of the Cavaliere San Giorgio, of blessed memory : " To the heart, always strike at the heart," which the master was wont to repeat as he placed a sword in the scholar's hand ; then his eyes rested upon the assistant as he repeated to his pupil the rules of posture, the respective merits of passing one or two fingers over the quillons, and the most approved method of advancing at an angle, with short, quick steps, always menacing the adversary with the point, and delivering upon the body of an imaginary opponent a stab-like thrust, which, in the use of the heavy Spanish SFORZA. rapier, took the place of the modern fencer's lunge.

Bernardino's musing was ended by the return of Hermes, who had exchanged his dainty clothes for a pair of coarse knee-breeches and a light shirt, over which was strapped a heavy plastron. In his right hand he carried a practising rapier with a small metal ball at the end, and in his left a mask. Narvaez gloved his right hand and bound a leather thong about his fingers and through the quillons with mathematical nicety, and they crossed swords. For twenty minutes Bernardino watched them, observing the careful poise of the heavy blades, the nimble feet, the exact balance of the body, the feint, the parry, — then the fencing humor seized him, and he longed for a bout himself. When Hermes stopped to rest, he approached, and, pointing to a rack of masks and blunt foils, said to Narvaez : "Good youth, do me the service to make me breathe deep, and, if you touch me, I will call my self your pupil."

" Five ducats to one he pinks thee, Bernardino ! " cried Hermes, as the governor threw off his slashed doublet and selected a sword. Bernardino forced the fencing, thinking thereby to derive advantage from his superior weight and reach. Narvaez essayed to disengage, but his op ponent's weapon always returned to contact with his own. At length he succeeded in dropping his sword ere his antagonist's blade caught it, and, with a turn of the wrist, delivered a stroke that touched Bernardino fairly on the breast. " Well played, my Narvaez, and an honest Span ish mandoble," cried Hermes, laughing at his com panion's defeat ; " to • the heart, always to the heart," he added, pointing to the maxim of the patron of fencers. The governor appeared nettled. " If thou canst touch me again with such trifling care," he ex claimed, "I will reward the stroke with five gold ducats !

" Forward and back they moved, until Narvaez, abandoning his guarded defence, made several rapid passes, then, springing aside and forward, he executed the favorite manœuvre of the Spanish school, the traverse, to be followed by a thrust from the angle thus gained ; but Bernardino resorted simultaneously to a counter of French in vention, with the result that Narvaez, divining his thought, changed his own stroke in the instant of execution, and, catching his opponent's blade with his owu, sent it flying to the ground. At this discomfiture the governor turned on his heel in vexation, and drew on his doublet. " Disarmed is worse than touched, and here are your five ducats," he said to the fencer, who dropped them into a purse which he tossed in the SFORZA. air with a merry laugh, and snatched as it de scended.

In a moment more Hermes had resumed his ordinary attire. " And now for breakfast," pursued the governor, as they passed out into the sti-eet. " Fried pig's trotters, peppered kidneys, ham with olive sauce, eggs with cheese of Seville " His words ceased as the speaker crossed the path of an approaching individual, whose appear ance caused him a disagreeable surprise. The new comer was a man in the prime of life, of vigorous body and calm, intellectual face. He saluted Hermes and Bernardino with a slight wave of the hand and a murmured buon giorno, and pursued his leisurely way. Hermes, in returning his greeting, made, with middle fingers and thumb drawn to gether and fore and little fingers extended, the familiar sign which averts the blight of the evil eye. " What brings Almodoro back ? " he murmured.

" He has been in the Levant for years, and I thought we were rid of him forever. Madre bea tissima, my appetite is gone." " He returned a week ago in answer to a press ing summons, and is now in high favor. We meet to-day at noon, and together are to be received by the duke. 'Tis said he has been on a pilgrimage." "How should one who holds converse with Satan make a pilgrimage?" "To confer with the evil spirits of the East — they are most potent under that burning sun. Be hold ! " added Bernardino, pointing to the ground, '• mark you that — a dead leaf — whence comes it thus withered? See, it moves and rustles, though not a breath stirs." " And, mark you, he is not aged a clay since I last saw him. His looks never change. That is where you may read the devil's blessing. It is well known that he is Giacomo Contarini, aged forty-nine to-day — aged forty-nine when he was " " Bah !

Giacomo Contarini was Doge of Venice half a dozen generations back." " But he did not die." " He resigned his office." " Resigned his office and its burdens, left Ven ice, and has been wandering from one country to another ever since. In the doge's palace hangs his portrait among all the others. I have seen it, and it is Almodoro's face — the meeting eyebrows, the furtive look of the eyes, the sad, set expression of the lips, all are there — and yet that portrait of him was painted as he looked two centuries ago ! "

Chapter II. Invasion

On a broad terrace that skirted the parapet of the castle of Milan sat Bernardino Corte, governor of that fortress, and Almodoro, soothsayer to the duke, and famous in the arts of magic and divi nation. Both were men of striking appearance. Bernardino possessed the muscular, deep-chested frame and easy poise of an athlete. He had fine gray eyes that could be keen or tender ; his ad dress was frank and engaging ; for men, he had brief, clear, straightforward words, and for women the fascination of a handsome and successful man who apparently has never loved. His early years had been filled with adversity. He had travelled extensively, and, returning to his native Lombardy, brought back a large observation upon the tactics and equipment of foreign armies, and a mind filled with the poesy and romance of France and Spain.

He could tell many a story of the age which pro duced " Le Roman de la Rose," and a novelette which he wrote attracted the attention of the Court. Almodoro's was a more thoughtful face. He had INVASION. 17 the vigorous physique and nerve-calm which remain when the mind has not been overtasked nor the body over-indulged. He seemed in the prime of life, a student in appearance, and, from his dis trait look, one could divine a man habituated to the luxury of solitude. The repose aud serenity of his presence indicated a life apart from ordinary care. His swarthy complexion had been deepened by Asiatic climates, and in his accent there was a savor of Oriental tongues. Of late he had been journeying in India, amid scenes with which he professed himself familiar, and in whose weird in spiration he delighted.

Men said that he belonged to the brotherhood of alchemists — a connection which, with his learning and his independence, procured him the enmity of the Church, — an en mity whereof he might have received emphatic token had not the powers of darkness and of light been so evenly balanced in the estimation of the fifteenth century, that it was often accounted haz ardous to meddle with the devil's own. These two were the most trusted of all who, after aiding Ludovico Sforza in the dispossession of his nephew Galeazzo, had served him in the maintenance of his usurped authority. Their desultory talk had lapsed to silence as they awaited the summons which should presently call them to the presence of the duke, and they now sat with heads bared in the shade of an awning, 9. SFORZA. while their gaze rested carelessly upon the castle enclosure, the clustering masses of tawny gables and peaked roofs, or, beyond, upon the immeasur able expanse of green, stretching away to the Alps, whose shadowy outline a keen eye could discover.

The famous citadel of Milan enclosed an exten sive area, and served the purpose of palace, fortress, dungeon, treasury, and barrack. Within it resided the duke ; at one side was imprisoned, with her child, Isabelle of Aragon, widow of the dis possessed Galeazzo : in a central tower were gold and precious stones. Along the rampart, ready to meet the impending attack, were stored the best appliances known to military science. Upon each tower was a contrivance capable of tossing a fifty pound stone two hundred yards ; within the covered galleries were ranged crossbows of such power that they could only be bent by a wheel ; these last weapons threw either sharp steel bolts, to pierce the armor of a knight, or bars bound about with oakum dipped in inextinguishable fire, and were so deadly that the Council of the Lateran condemned them as " displeasing to God."

In an angle of the wall was an immense copper pan, which, when filled with water and placed in the dry ditch or on the counterscarp, revealed the mines the enemy might be digging, — each blow of the pick in a subterranean gallery causing a quiver on the water. INVASION. 19 " How tedious grows this waiting ! " the gov ernor ejaculated, unbuckling his sword and laying it on the bench beside him ; " this morning's estaf fette must have brought despatches of importance." " Our couriers from Asti can bring only good tidings," answered Almodoro, " for we know that there all goes well ; but I dread our next letters from Venice." " Let us dismiss Venice from our thoughts, and bid Ludovico do likewise. The Senate threatens an incursion, and seeks to profit by the weakness which an unlucky year imposes on us ; but the only real danger is that we should be beguiled into diverting a fraction of our strength from the de cisive encounter with the French."

" Then what is to prevent the Venetians from marching upon Milan ? " asked Almodoro. " You will say because they are Italians, and that, be yond the greed of adding a couple of towns to their Venetia, they would not help the invader. But I tell you the Venetians are not Italians : they are a people by themselves ; they have more interests in the Levant, or along the narrow seas, than here." "It seems to me," observed the governor after a pause, " that Ludovico is changed of late ; ten years ago he would not have been taken thus, in evil days, with two powerful adversaries closing upon him, and not a friend in the world." "Do you think it strange," retorted the sooth- SFORZA. sayer, " that a man should be disconcerted at the prospect of an exchange of rank and riches for odium and exile ? " " It is indeed a long way from his present eleva tion to the days of his condottiere ancestor," an swered Bernardino, with a sneer.

"All my life," pursued the alchemist, — "and my life has been longer than my looks tell — I have watched people pass from one calamity to another ; therefore I have ceased to marvel at the infinitely sad things Time brings about." " And I," rejoined the governor, " who am younger in heart than in years, have but lately begun to wonder at them. Ah, mercy me ! yester day brought back a bitter memory. Were you in Milan, Almodoro, fourteen years ago, when the plague was at its worst ? No ? Well I was here. The streets were deserted ; every other lintel bore the red sign ; the dead-cart passed with its crucifix and its ghastly burden. I fled from the infected air, and from the horrors that thronged on every side. In all the streets I saw but one person, a youth of my own age. I recall his face with vivid ness, though we met no more until two years after, when he took from me a girl of whom I was en amoured.

It was a boyish amourette of mine, and foolish, if you will ; but such follies are the part of life one loves best to look back upon. We crossed swords in a grove beyond Monza, and by way of INVASION. 21 satisfaction I received two inches of his rapier. I came out of the delirium of a sick-room to learn that he and my sweetheart were married. Twelve years have passed since then, and yesterday, going into the Duomo to rest my thoughts in the calm of its great white arches, I heard a priest chanting, and saw a knot of people before the altar, and in their midst a bier, and the face of the dead was uncovered; and I looked, and recognized my rival." " You did not weep for him," remarked the soothsayer indifferently. "You might have thought I wept, lor the tears welled up to my eyes, and I lost the glittering altar, and the droning priest, and the dead face, and it seemed to me that I looked across them all to the last time that I saw her, and I remembered the crimson flush of that beautiful day, and the tinkling cadencas of guitars, aud it all came over me like a new sorrow."

" 'Tis true that an old wound sometimes bleeds afresh," assented Almodoro, restraining an incli nation to smile at his companion's unwonted ear nestness. " The Arabs call it the cut of a poisoned knife. But hither comes a page to summon us." Before receiving his confidential advisers Ludo vico Sforza had dined, as usual, at midday and alone. In a room painted with Moorish ara- SFORZA. besques, a major-domo, attended by two servants, stood beside a table laid with damask cloth, and furnished with knife and spoon and wooden salt cellar, and Dutch porcelain platter, and tinted goblet of Murano. They waited but a moment, for Sforza had that punctuality which in olden times was the virtue of princes. A curtain was thrown back and the duke entered. Though grown portly, Sforza was still of erect, graceful figure.

His face was full, clean-shaven, of dark complexion, with a profile suggestive of firm ness and refinement. His lips were delicate and expressive. His eyes were black, lustrous, and piercing, and looked from beneath strongly-arched brows. His hair was cut square in front, and brushed forward half way down the forehead, and worn long at the sides and back. In character he was shaped according to Macchiavelli's subsequent standard of princely excellence, — astute, self-reli ant, well-informed, cruel at times, though less through badness of heart than in compliance with the stern egotism of the time, and using fraud and force with the subtleness of Italian statecraft. He was indefatigable in advancing the welfare of his subjects, fond of letters and of the companionship of learned men, and a magnificent patron of the arts.