Influenced by his wife’s ambition, and the birth of his son—also perhaps by the impossibility, when the hour came, of relinquishing the sweets of power and sacrificing his vast projects and the fruits of his past incessant labours to the claim of mere primogeniture represented by the feeble and already failing Gian Galeazzo—Lodovico was evidently scheming, after 1490, to make himself Duke of Milan. From the time of the Moro’s marriage the ceremonial homage which had been paid till then to the young Duke was gradually lessened. The tutelage which had been proper in his boyhood was now used to emphasize his incapacity. No single office or dignity was at his disposal. Ministers of State, captains of fortresses, generals and magistrates, all were appointed by Lodovico. At no point did his subjects come into contact with their real sovereign. He was dependent for all supplies upon the Moro, who kept absolute control of the immense Sforza treasure. The birth of his heir was but scantily celebrated, while that of Lodovico’s a little later was made the occasion of the most pompous rejoicings. The halls of the sovereigns in the Corte Ducale were gradually deserted, while Lodovico and Beatrice’s apartments in the Rocchetta were thronged. The self-seeking courtiers knew well where their devotion was most profitably placed. Besides, it was melancholy in the chambers of a sickly prince and a sad princess ever brooding over her wrongs. The two appeared less and less in public, and finally retired altogether to the Castle of Pavia, and their pathetic figures were almost forgotten on the joyous stage of Milanese life. But they existed—a constant menace to the Moro, a weapon for his thousand enemies in the State, and for jealous Italy outside. Isabella’s piteous complaints to her grandfather, whom she implored to right her husband, inflamed the long-standing Aragonese hatred of the Sforza. The other powers—Venice, baulked in her greed of conquest by the strong hand of the Moro, and ever nervous for the cities which she had wrested from Milan in Filippo Maria’s time; Pope Alexander VI., who allowed no gratitude to the Sforza, although through Cardinal Ascanio they had been the means of his election, to interfere with his schemes for a new Borgian Italy; Florence, politically and commercially jealous of the Lombard State—all would have gladly seen the Moro overthrown and Milan depressed.