wife of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga of Bozzolo, who came to
meet her with two beautiful daughters. "Messer Andrea Mantegna himself,"
exclaimed the marchioness, "could not paint fairer maidens!" On the
12th, she reached Cremona, where Lodovico's cousin, Francesco Sforza,
was awaiting her, and a crowd of people hailed her arrival with
enthusiasm. After spending a night in the Episcopal palace, she went on
to Pizzighettone, where she discovered that her best hat had been
forgotten, and sent a messenger back to Mantua with the key of her black
chest, desiring one of her servants to look out her hat with the
jewelled feather and send it after her by a flying courier. On the 15th,
the Marchesana reached Pavia, where both the Duchesses of Milan and Bari
rode out to meet her, and placing her between them, after many embraces,
conducted her through the city. Here the two dukes and all the
ambassadors were awaiting her, and a troop of trumpeters and outriders
escorted the party up to the castle gates. That evening she supped alone
with Beatrice, and the hours flew by in delightful intercourse. Both
sisters were in the highest spirits, and Isabella anticipated the
greatest pleasure from her visit, only regretting that her husband had
not been able to accompany her.

"The only news here," she wrote next day to the marquis, "is the
election of this new Pope, which fills every one with great joy, and is
said to be entirely due to Monsignore Ascanio, who will, they say, be
the new Vice-Chancellor."

On the 25th of July, Innocent VIII. had breathed his last, and on the
6th of August, the conclave met to elect a new Pope. Among the
twenty-three Cardinals of which the Sacred College then consisted, three
were prominent candidates for the papal tiara. First of all there was
Cardinal Roderigo Borgia, the oldest and wealthiest of the group, who
held the three most important archbishoprics in Spain, as well as
innumerable benefices in the rest of Christendom, and whose scandalous
vices amid the general corruption of morals in Rome offered no bar to
his advancement to the chair of St. Peter. Cardinal Ascanio Sforza, the
rich and powerful brother of Lodovico Moro, was the second candidate
for the tiara; while the third was Giuliano della Rovere, Cardinal of
S. Pietro in Vincula, whose well-known French sympathies, as well as the
influential position which he had occupied in Rome under his uncle,
Sixtus IV., made him unpopular with most of his coll