Thus died at the age of thirty-two years the magnificent Maria Galeazzo Sforza, our heroine's father. Did these pages profess to give a biography of him instead of his daughter, it would be necessary to follow the chroniclers of his time through the long and sickening list of his cruelties and abominations. This we may spare ourselves. For the purpose of showing what tendencies and dispositions his daughter may be supposed to have inherited, and what were the manners and habits of the home in which, and from which, she received her early impressions and education, it will be sufficient, in addition to what has been already said, to mention one or two of the facts which history has put on record against this man. There is every reason to believe that he murdered his mother by poison. All the authorities concur in representing her as an excellent and very able princess, whose wisdom and energy ensured his quiet succession to his father's throne. He very soon became jealous of her authority; drove her by his ill treatment from Milan; and is believed to have poisoned her at the first halting-place of her journey from that capital towards her own dower city, Cremona. His guilt was very generally credited by his contemporaries, and subsequent writers concur in thinking their suspicions in all probability just. Enough has probably been said in previous pages to give the reader some idea of the profligate debauchery which marked the whole course of his life. It is unnecessary to transfer to an English page the details of cynical immorality, mingled with a ferocious cruelty, which seems to mark them to a certain degree with the character of insanity, as recorded by the old writers,[68] especially by Corio, his own personal attendant. It is sufficient to have drawn attention to the influences which must have been exercised by the moral atmosphere of such a court, and such a home on the young bride, who is about to step from it to a court of her own. CHAPTER III. Catherine's marriage.—"Petit Courrier des dames" for 1476.—Four years of prosperity.—Life in Rome in the fifteenth century.—A hunting party in the Campagna.—Guilty or not guilty?—Catherine and her husband leave Rome.