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Passing over, with the barest mention, his temporary return to power, which he accomplished by one of those lightning-like expeditions that even among Gaucho horsemen rendered him conspicuous, let us hasten on to the great dramatic crisis of his history; and taking no notice of the five years of marching and countermarching, scheming, fighting, and negotiating, that intervened between his defeat at the Laguna Larga and 1835, draw to a close our hasty sketch.
The half-fledged tyrants were fairly out of their splendid nest in the Via Larga, and the Republic had recovered the use of its will again.
I was lulled to sleep by the well-rhymed charms of that rustic maiden `prettier than the turnip-flower, `with a cheek more savoury than cheese. But to get such a well-scented notion of the contadina, one must lie on velvet cushions in the Via Larga not go to look at the Fierucoloni stumping in to the Piazza della Nunziata this evening after sundown."
Entering its court from the Via Larga, we found ourselves beneath a pillared arcade, passing round the court like a cloister; and on the walls of the palace, under this succession of arches, were statues, bas-reliefs, and sarcophagi, in which, first, dead Pagans had slept, and then dead Christians, before the sculptured coffins were brought hither to adorn the palace of the Medici.
The great humanists of his time, Leonardo Bruni, Carlo Marsuppini, Poggio and Niccolò de' Niccoli were his companions, and in his palace in Via Larga, and in his villas at Careggi and Poggio a Caiano, he gathered the most precious treasures, rare manuscripts, and books, not a few antique marbles and jewels, coins and medals and statues, while he filled the courts and rooms, built and decorated by the greatest artists of his time, with the statues of Donatello, the pictures of Paolo Uccello, Andrea del Castagno, Fra Filippo Lippo, and Benozzo Gozzoli.
He enjoyed the humour of the incident, which had suddenly transformed him, an alien, and a friend of the Medici, into an orator who tickled the ears of the people blatant for some unknown good which they called liberty. He felt quite glad that he had been laid hold of and hurried along by the crowd as he was coming out of the palace in the Via Larga with a commission to the Signoria.
When the Medici returned to power and transferred their residence from the Palace of the Via Larga, which they had occupied, to the Palace of the Seigneurie, Cosmo wished to change the Council Hall into an audience chamber, and charged the presumptuous Bacchio Bandinelli, whose designs had attracted him, with various alterations of an important character; but the sculptor had undoubtedly presumed too much on his talent as an architect, and in spite of the assistance of Giuliano Baccio d'Agnolo, whom he called to his aid, he worked for ten years without being able to conquer the difficulties which he had created for himself.
Giovanni and Giuliano entered their devastated palace in the Via Larga, abolished the Grand Council, and dealt with the republic as they listed. There was no longer any medium in Florence possible between either tyranny or some such government as the Medici had now destroyed. The State was too rotten to recover even the modified despotism of Lorenzo's days.
This island of Isabella, or Samoet, agrees so accurately in its description with Isla Larga, which lies east of Exuma, that it is only necessary to read it with the chart unfolded to become convinced of the identity.
He was especially growing in favour with the young Cardinal Giovanni de' Medici, who had even spoken of Tito's forming part of his learned retinue on an approaching journey to Rome; and the bright young Greek who had a tongue that was always ready without ever being quarrelsome, was more and more wished for at gay suppers in the Via Larga, and at Florentine games in which he had no pretension to excel, and could admire the incomparable skill of Piero de' Medici in the most graceful manner in the world.
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