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Lorenzo's services to learning were inspired by feelings infinitely more noble than those actuating his political plans. A patriotism as lofty as it was beneficent led him to desire that his country should be in the van of Italian progress in Renaissance studies.
Of course Lorenzo meant this as a joke, but Michelangelo immediately took his hammer and struck out several of the teeth, and this too pleased Lorenzo greatly. There was nothing that the Magnificent ruler loved so much as genius, so Michelangelo was received into the palace and made the companion of Lorenzo's sons.
"But how am I to get at this great man?" said the Greek, rather impatiently. "I was coming to that," said Nello. "Just now everybody of any public importance will be full of Lorenzo's death, and a stranger may find it difficult to get any notice.
Then when the revolt of the small city of Volterra from Florentine rule was suppressed by Lorenzo's agents, with a rigorous severity that cast a stain on their master's name, owing to many unoffending scholars having suffered to the extent of losing their all, Lorenzo made noble amends.
And when they arruv, breathless, an' started in to screechin' what they'd give for the monopoly, why, them unsuspectin' Tulare boys got amused at 'em. I never heard just all they done, but they had Lorenzo singin' and dancin', while Saynt Augustine played the fiddle for him. And one of Lorenzo's heels did get a trifle grazed.
When Don Lorenzo had finished reciting his gloss, Don Quixote stood up, and in a loud voice, almost a shout, exclaimed as he grasped Don Lorenzo's right hand in his, "By the highest heavens, noble youth, but you are the best poet on earth, and deserve to be crowned with laurel, not by Cyprus or by Gaeta as a certain poet, God forgive him, said but by the Academies of Athens, if they still flourished, and by those that flourish now, Paris, Bologna, Salamanca.
Were no other proof forthcoming of Lorenzo's marvellous diplomatic genius than this one fact, that he checkmated the political schemes of Sixtus, and finally so neutralized his influence as to render him wellnigh impotent for evil-doing, such an achievement was sufficient to stamp him one of the greatest masters of statecraft Europe has known.
Nor, what is still more curious, do we hear anything of that Martelli, the bravo, 'who kept his sword for the defence of Lorenzo's person. The one had arrived accidentally, it seems. The other must have been a coward and escaped from the scuffle. 'When I turned, proceeds Bibboni, 'I found Lorenzo on his knees.
He was tutor to Lorenzo's sons until their mother interfered, holding that his views were far too loose, but while in that capacity he taught also Michelangelo and put him upon the designing of his relief of the battle of the Lapithae and Centaurs.
This last decade of Lorenzo's life from his thirty-first to his forty-second year was memorable in many respects. In the year 1481 he was again exposed to the danger of assassination. Battista Frescobaldi and two assistants in the Church of the Carmeli, and again on Ascension Day, made an attempt to stab him, but were frustrated by the vigilance of Lorenzo's friends.
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