They took off necklaces, rings, and earrings.  Charles viii gave them a receipt accurately drawn up, and pledged the jewels for 20,000 ducats.  Then, enriched by this money, he resumed his journey and made his way towards Asti.  The Duke of Orleans held the sovereignty of Asti, as we said before, and hither came to meet Charles both Ludovico Sforza and his father-in-law, Hercules d’Este, Duke of Ferrara.  They brought with them not only the promised troops and money, but also a court composed of the loveliest women in Italy.

The balls, fetes, and tourneys began with a magnificence surpassing anything that Italy had ever seen before.  But suddenly they were interrupted by the king’s illness.  This was the first example in Italy of the disease brought by Christopher Columbus from the New World, and was called by Italians the French, by Frenchmen the Italian disease.  The probability is that some of Columbus’s crew who were at Genoa or thereabouts had already brought over this strange and cruel complaint that counter balanced the gains of the American gold-mines.

The king’s indisposition, however, did not prove so grave as was at first supposed.  He was cured by the end of a few weeks, and proceeded on his way towards Pavia, where the young Duke John Galeazzo lay dying.  He and the King of France were first cousins, sons of two sisters of the house of Savoy.  So Charles viii was obliged to see him, and went to visit him in the castle where he lived more like prisoner than lord.  He found him half reclining on a couch, pale and emaciated, some said in consequence of luxurious living, others from the effects of a slow but deadly poison.  But whether or not the poor young man was desirous of pouring out a complaint to Charles, he did not dare say a word; for his uncle, Ludovico Sforza, never left the King of France for an instant.  But at the very moment when Charles viii was getting up to go, the door opened, and a young woman appeared and threw herself at the king’s feet; she was the wife of the unlucky John Galeazzo, and came to entreat his cousin to do nothing against her father Alfonso, nor against her brother Ferdinand.  At sight of her; Sforza scowled with an anxious and threatening aspect, far he knew not what impression might be produced on his ally by this scene.  But he was soon reassured; far Charles replied that he had advanced too far to draw back now, and that the glory of his name was at stake as well as the interests of his kingdom, and that these two motives were far too important to be sacrificed to any sentiment of pity he might feel, however real and deep it might be and was.  The poor young woman, who had based her last hope an this appeal, then rose from her knees and threw herself sobbing into her husband’s arms.  Charles viii and Ludavico Sforza, took their leave:  John Galeazzo was doomed.

Two days after, Charles viii left for Florence, accompanied by his ally; but scarcely had they reached Parma when a messenger caught them up, and announced to Ludovico that his nephew was just dead:  Ludovico at once begged Charles to excuse his leaving him to finish the journey alone; the interests which called him back to Milan were so important, he said, that he could not under the circumstances stay away a single day longer.  As a fact he had to make sure of succeeding the man he had assassinated.