him which he heeded, so much as their society and their services. It is
certain that Bramante was scantily paid at first; Leonardo, on the
other hand, was up to 1496 suitably remunerated and besides, what kept
him at the court, if not his own free will The world lay open to him,
as perhaps to no other mortal man of that day; and if proof were
wanting of the loftier element in the nature of Lodovico il Moro, it is
found in the long stay of the enigmatic master at his court. That
afterwards Leonardo entered the service of Cesare Borgia and Francis I
was probably due to the interest he felt in the unusual and striking
character of the two men.

After the fall of the Moor, his sons were badly brought up among
strangers. The elder, Massimiliano, had no resemblance to him; the
younger, Francesco, was at all events not without spirit. Milan, which
in those years changed its rulers so often, and suffered so unspeakably
in t he change, endeavored to secure itself against a reaction. In the
year 1512 the French, retreating before the arms of Maximilian and the
Spaniards, were induced to make a declaration that the Milanese had
taken no part in their expulsion, and, without being guilty of
rebellion, might yield themselves to a new conqueror. It is a f act of
some political importance that in such moments of transition the
unhappy city, like Naples at the flight of the Aragonese, was apt to
fall a prey to gangs of (often highly aristocratic) scoundrels.

The house of Gonzaga at Mantua and that of Montefeltro of Urbino were
among the best ordered and richest in men of ability during the second
half of the fifteenth century. The Gonzaga were a tolerably harmonious
family; for a long period no murder had been known among them, and
their dead could be shown to the world without fear.7 The Marquis
Francesco Gonzaga and his wife, Isabella of Este, in spite of some few