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"The French envoys," wrote the Florentine ambassador, Pandolfini, to his master, Lorenzo de Medici, "are gone away disappointed with Signor Lodovico's gifts, expecting to receive a handsomer present after seeing all the splendours of the Treasury." Lodovico now determined to send an embassy to the French court to return the king's civilities and congratulate him on his marriage.
The report of Marco Foscari on the state of Florence, already quoted more than once, contains a curious aristocratic comment upon the shop-life of illustrious Florentine citizens. Even Piero de' Medici refused a Neapolitan fief on the ground that he was a tradesman.
On leaving the Medici Gardens Miriam felt herself astray in the world; and having no special reason to seek one place more than another, she suffered chance to direct her steps as it would.
Michelagnolo having therefore made a model, the matter was disputed at great length before Cardinal Giulio de' Medici by many craftsmen and competent citizens; and in the end neither the one model nor the other was carried into execution.
Such were the leading contradictory and illogical traits, the treachery, knavery, and black intrigues of a single house, that of the Medici. From this sketch, we may judge of the other princes of Italy and Europe. All the envoys of Cosmos I. to the court of France had, in their secret instructions, an order to poison Strozzi, Catherine's relation, when he arrived.
Fanatic puritan as he was, vainer than any Medici, it is difficult to understand how he persuaded the Florentines to listen to his eloquence, spoiled as it must have been for them by the Ferrarese dialect. How could a people who were the founders of the modern world, the creators of modern culture, allow themselves to be baffled by a fanatic friar prophesying judgment?
"In the same time with the illustrious Lorenzo de Medici, the elder," Vasari writes, "which was truly an age of gold for men of talent, there flourished a certain Alessandro, called after our custom Sandro, and further named di Botticello, for a reason which we shall presently see.
Blyth, tightening her hold of Madonna with one hand, and producing the framed drawing of the Venus de' Medici with the other. "Madonna's copy from my bust of the Venus!" cried Valentine, interposing with his usual readiness, and skipping forward with his accustomed alacrity.
Her thoughts would wander to the copy of the Venus de Medici that was hidden under Mrs. Blyth's coverlid; would vibrate between trembling eagerness to see it presented without longer delay, and groundless apprehension that Zack might, after all, not remember it, or not care to have it when it was given to him. And as her thoughts wandered, so her eyes followed them.
Fashion, on the plea of "good taste," impudently adapted to the wounds of Gothic architecture the paltry gewgaws of a day, marble ribbons, metallic plumes, a veritable leprosy of egg-shaped moldings, of volutes, wreaths, draperies, spirals, fringes, stone flames, bronze clouds, lusty cupids, and bloated cherubs, which began to ravage the face of art in the oratory of Catherine de Medici, and destroyed it, two centuries later, tortured and distorted, in the Dubarry's boudoir.
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