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Belleisle, the Two Belleisles, with Valori and Company, arrived June 2d at Kuttenberg, at the Schloss of Maleschau; "spoke little of Chotusitz," says Stille; "and were none of them at the pains to ride to the ground." Marechal Belleisle, for the next three days, had otherwise speech of Friedrich; especially, on June 5th, a remarkable Dialogue. "Won't your Majesty co-operate?"
We, keeping henceforth the Diplomacies, the vaporous Foreshadows, and general Dance of Unclean Spirits with their intrigues and spectralities, well underground, so far as possible, will stick to what comes up as practical Performance on Friedrich's part, and try to give intelligible account of that. Valori says, he is greatly changed, and for the better, by these late reverses of fortune.
Still, some odour of the facts might escape in spite of precaution, and before Tito could incur the unpleasant consequences of acting against his friends, he must be assured of immunity from any prosecution as a Medicean, and from deprivation of office for a year to come. These propositions did not sound in the ear of Francesco Valori precisely as they sound to us.
So that "his look became FAROUCHE," in the sight of Valori; and the spectre of Ruin kept him company, and such hell-dogs were in chase of him; till Czaslau, when the dice fell kind again! All this had been didactic on a young docile man. He was but thirty gone. And if readers mark such docility at those years, they will find considerable meaning in it.
But, you see, no opposition could prevent the assembly from being prorogued, and a certain powerful influence rightly applied during the next three days might determine the wavering courage of those who desire that the Appeal should be granted, and might even give a check to the headlong enmity of Francesco Valori.
Only within the last hour had the question been decided: the Signoria had remained divided, four of them standing out resolutely for the Appeal in spite of the strong argument that if they did not give way their houses should be sacked, until Francesco Valori, in brief and furious speech, made the determination of his party more ominously distinct by declaring that if the Signoria would not defend the liberties of the Florentine people by executing those five perfidious citizens, there would not be wanting others who would take that cause in hand to the peril of all who opposed it.
He has aides-de-camp, dashing out every-whither with orders, with expedients; Prince Henri, his younger Brother: galloping the fastest; nay, at last, he begs Valori himself to gallop, with orders to a certain General Gessler, in whose Brigade are Dragoons.
To Jacopo of Volterra we owe piquant sketches of members of the Curia in the time of Sixtus IV. Vespasiano Fiorentino has often been referred to already, and as a historical authority a high place must be assigned to him; but his gift as a painter of character is not to be compared with that of Machiavelli, Niccolo Valori, Guicciardini, Varchi, Francesco Vettori, and others, by whom European historical literature has probably been as much influenced in this direction as by the ancients.
The stately philosophical historians, so stoically grand, and the prattling local chroniclers, so highly coloured and so gentle and graceful; Guicciardini and Machiavelli and Valori and Segni, on the one hand Corio, Allegretti, Matarazzo, Infessura, on the other; all these, from whom we learn the real existence of immorality far more universal and abominable than our dramatists venture to show, relate quietly, calmly, with analytical frigidness or gossiping levity, the things which we often shrink from repeating, and sometimes recoil from believing.
Valori, and the French Minister at Dresden, had again been trying to stir up the Polish Majesty to stand for Kaiser; but of course that enterprise, eager as the Polish Majesty might be for such a dignity, had now to collapse, and become totally hopeless. That is one's payment for cutting the rope from their neck last year!
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