The golden days of Milan changed all at once to gloom. Silence shut down upon the dancing and sweet music. The Duke, to whom even his children and State seemed no longer worth living for, sat for nine days in a darkened chamber alone, refusing all comfort, while in Sta. Maria delle Grazie the monks chanted incessant masses for Beatrice’s soul. The Moro was overwhelmed. _He who had ever lived happy, now began to feel great anguish_, says the Venetian Sanuti. The fabric of his dreams had crashed upon him. What were kingdoms to him without that clear-sighted and dauntless spirit at his side? Not only was his strong affection rent, but his profound faith in his good fortune was awfully shaken. As if the evil augury had to declare itself unmistakably, on the night of Beatrice’s death a large part of the walls of the vast pleasaunce which he had created round the Castello fell with a great crash, ruined by no storm or wind, or agency perceptible to human sense. From this moment, so much is man’s destiny affected by his own spirits, all Lodovico’s misfortunes began. He entered on that downward course which was to drag so much to ruin with it—and to the husband’s loss of the blessing of this Beatrice, the poet of the Italian Renaissance ascribes not only the fall of Moro, Sforza, and Visconte Snake together, but the captivity of Italy. ‘Beatrice bea, vivendo, il suo consorte, E lo lascia infelice alla sua morte. Anzi tutta Italia, che con lei Fia trionfante e senza lei, captiva.’[3] Footnote 3: Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, canto xlii.