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Certain of our Florentines sought to accommodate matters, but failed in their attempt. Now I look to coming to terms through the Cardinal; for this is the advice of Baldassare Balducci. What ensues I will report to you." The Cardinal is mentioned as being the most likely person to secure the desired result.
However I am minded to answer none of them, until I have related in my behoof, not indeed an entire story, for I would not seem to foist my stories in among those of so honourable a company as that with which I have made you acquainted, but a part of one, that its very incompleteness may shew that it is not one of them: wherefore, addressing my assailants, I say: That in our city there was in old time a citizen named Filippo Balducci, a man of quite low origin, but of good substance and well versed and expert in matters belonging to his condition, who had a wife that he most dearly loved, as did she him, so that their life passed in peace and concord, nor there was aught they studied so much as how to please each other perfectly.
It so happened that an intimate Florentine friend of Buonarroti, the Baldassare Balducci mentioned at the end of his letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco, was employed in Gallo's house of business. It is probable, therefore, that this man formed the link of connection between the sculptor and his new patron.
"To continue my history of the tomb of Julius: I say that when he changed his mind about building it in his lifetime, some ship-loads of marble came to the Ripa, which I had ordered a short while before from Carrara; and as I could not get money from the Pope to pay the freightage, I had to borrow 150 or 200 ducats from Baldassare Balducci, that is, from the bank of Jacopo Gallo.
The marbles I had brought to Rome lay till the date of Leo's creation on the Piazza, and both lots were injured and pillaged." Again, a letter of October 1542, addressed to some prelate, contains further particulars. We learn he was so short of money that he had to borrow about 200 ducats from his friend Baldassare Balducci at the bank of Jacopo Gallo.
For it must be remembered that mine was the case of the son of Filippo Balducci related by Messer Boccaccio in the merry tales of his Decamerone 1 who had come to years of adolescence without ever having beheld womanhood, so that the first sight of it in the streets of Florence affected him so oddly that he vexed his sire with foolish questions and still more foolish prayers.
God will forgive you for promising two thousand florins reward to the man who should bring you the head of Dietisalvi, Nerone Nigi, Angelo Antinori, Niccalo Soderini, and twice the money if they were handed over alive; God will forgive you for dooming to the scaffold or the gibbet the son of Papi Orlandi, Francesco di Brisighella, Bernardo Nardi, Jacopo Frescobaldi, Amoretto Baldovinetti, Pietro Balducci, Bernardo di Banding, Francesco Frescobaldi, and more than three hundred others whose names were none the less dear to Florence because they were less renowned; so much far your crimes."
Above all, there is Francis Balducci Pegolotti, that intrepid factor who served the great commercial house of the Bardi of Florence, and who wrote a priceless handbook for the use of merchants about 1340.
And the Pisans answered in spite and envy, 'They are our land Arabs. The King answered wisely, "It does not appear to me Arab's money; you Pisans, what golden money have you got?" Then they were confused, and knew not what to answer. So he asked if there was any Florentine among them. And there was found a merchant from the other-side-Arno, by name Peter Balducci, discreet and wise.
In the year 1355, Francisco Balducci Pegoletti, an Italian, wrote a system of commercial geography, of great importance, considering the period in which it was written. Its title translated into English, is, "Of the Divisions of Countries, and of their Measures, Merchandize, and other things useful to be known by the Merchants of various parts of the World."
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