France, was attacked, defeated, and driven from his dominions.
He collected another army of Swiss and Italians, and encountered the foreign hosts once more on the battle-field. The conflict would have been decided in his favor, but the Swiss had been secretly bribed by the French, and in the heat of action withdrew. The Italians were panic-stricken and fled. Ludovico, deserted by all but one or two attendants, took the clothes from the dead body of a peasant, and sought to escape in this disguise. He almost accomplished his purpose, but at nightfall was recognized by a cavalryman, seized, and dragged to prison. Alone in the gloomy cell, the duke pondered the livelong, sleepless night on the past, with its glorious and misused opportunities, and on the blank and hopeless future. The next morning the gaoler found in the cell a wan and gray-haired man, instead of the raven-locked and handsome nobleman he had shut in the night before. In one night, grief and fear had done the work of years. His terrors were not without foundation, for those chains never left his limbs till they were struck off his corpse.
Such instances are by no means rare, and we could readily name many other characters distinguished in history, whose sufferings, proportionate to their powers and prospects, have prematurely, and in a very short time, blanched their locks.
