To such a personality as this prince’s, so conspicuous and so frenzied, legend readily clings, even in his own lifetime, and the imaginations which peered into the secrets of his dungeons carried, perhaps, some of their morbid visions with them. We must, however, believe the contemporary writers, who record hideous deeds committed by the Duke even in the light of day, grim pranks of punishment and devices of cruelty inflicted upon offenders, under his own eyes. There was a strange touch of imagination in his adjustment of torments to offences, and often a kind of wild justice and sympathy for the oppressed, horribly manifested, as when he punished a priest, who had refused the funeral rites to a poor man, by burying him alive in the same grave as the corpse. Galeazzo Sforza was in fact an embodied paradox—a monster of vices and virtues, as he has been called, or better still, in his daughter Caterina’s word, a ‘Fantastick.’ This mad, bad prince had the theoretic admiration of his age for virtue, and was possessed with a very rage for cultivating it in his subjects. Abuses, such as bribery of magistrates, corruption in the public administration, oppressive restrictions on trade and commerce, were vigorously put down. He allowed none but himself to take money from petitioners, or to seize other people’s property. His passion for justice and good government had planted so many gallows in his realm, that when his young bride came to Milan she trembled at the spectacle and fell on her knees, imploring pardon for prisoners and offenders, a boon immediately granted to her compassionate beauty. Though greedy of treasure and guilty of robbing his rich subjects, Galeazzo was punctual and exact in paying his servants—a rare virtue in an Italian prince. So trustworthy was his word as a sovereign that men regarded it as if it had been money. He had great personal attractions, was merry, affable and familiar with those around him, and willingly gave audience to his subjects. The courage which the populace expect of a prince was conspicuous in him—_a man who never knew fear_, as his fearless daughter Caterina proudly describes him.