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.