Two Books on the Manner of Making Earth Fortifications

...I send it to you, understanding in this the ardent affection and devoted observance that I bear toward your most illustrious name. Obtaining this (as I certainly hope) will be the cause for me to strive in the future to write much more diffusely and copiously on this subject for the public benefit of noble and virtuous minds. It remains for me, finally, to pray to God that, just as He has deigned, through the Excellent persons of Your Excellency and the Most Illustrious Lady, the Lady Donna Lucretia de' Medici, to bind together by blood two of the most illustrious families of Italy—which were always abundant with men who were lovers of virtuous things—so may He grant to Your Excellency (beyond the other felicities that befit your Divine worth) an honored succession of as many and such children as you desire, so that both the temples of fame and of virtue may be made successively more marvelous and more stupendous by them, with the ornamentation of infinite trophies. In Venice, the 2nd of October, 1559.