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Lorenzo's sons failed to maintain the influence over the people of Florence which their father had enjoyed; and the leadership of the city fell into the hands of the Dominican friar, Savonarola, whose fervid preaching attracted and held for a time the attention of the fickle Florentine populace.
Lorenzo's secret is locked in the bosom of the priest who received his last confession; no person ever learnt what it was. "Soon after this event a well was cleaned in the farmyard of the marquis' villa. It had been disused for many years, and was almost closed up by shrubs and old trees. On digging among the rubbish a human skeleton was found.
He betrothed his niece Bianca Maria, in 1494, to the Emperor Maximilian, with a dower of 400,000 ducats, receiving in return an investiture of the Duchy, which, however, he kept secret. While affairs were in this state, and as yet no open disturbance in Lorenzo's balance of power had taken place, Alexander VI. was elected to the Papacy.
His father and mother were of the same way of thinking, and all but idolised the holy child who had come amongst them as an angel of peace. They regarded her as the blessing of their house, and the comfort of their old age. Paluzzo, Lorenzo's brother, delighted in encouraging the intimacy that had arisen between his young sister-in-law and his own wife Vannozza.
During Lorenzo's prolonged and painful illness, she was always at his side, nursing him with indefatigable tenderness, and completing the work which her example had wrought. His passage from life to eternity appeared but a journey. The efforts of Satan to disturb him on his death-bed, though often repeated, were each time frustrated.
The tyranny thus established was less secure, inasmuch as it openly rested upon violence, than Lorenzo's power had been; nor were there signs wanting that the burghers could ill brook their servitude. The conspiracy of Pietro Paolo Boscoli and Agostino Capponi proved that the Medicean brothers ran daily risk of life.
This praise although he knew it to come from a madman so pleased Don Lorenzo's father that he begged Don Quixote to remain; and for four days the knight was entertained by Don Diego. Then Don Quixote felt it his duty to break away from luxury and idleness in order to live up to the laws of knight-errantry, Sancho left with a sigh, and a tear in his eye, for never in his life had he lived so well.
"My injury, sir, is nothing. With your permission we will not allude to a matter so trifling and so personal." But Lucia had burst through from her cell and was pouring out the whole story while she clasped Lorenzo's arm. "This noble gentleman he has taken my place, Lorenzo! He has borne it for me. He has suffered that I might be saved."
There I shall go some day." "And why to Rome?" "Every one goes to Rome; thy marvelous pageants are Roman; art lives there." "Yes," mused Lorenzo, "Rome on its hills is still the Eternal City. And yet in those far days to come I doubt if thou wilt be as happy as in Lorenzo's gardens. How sayest thou, boy?" "I know not," was the answer. "Only I know that I shall go."
Long before Lorenzo's death, Girolamo Savonarola had made the corruption of Florence the subject of sermons which drew vast crowds to San Marco.
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