‘What can be more worthy of desire to a well-regulated mind than the enjoyment of leisure with dignity? That is what all good men wish to attain, but what great men alone accomplish. In the progress of public affairs we may indeed be allowed to look forward to a period of rest; but no repose should totally seclude us from attention to the concerns of our country. I cannot deny that the path it has been my lot to tread has been arduous and rugged, full of danger, and beset with treachery; but I console myself with the thought of having contributed to the welfare of the State, the prosperity of which now rivals that of any other, however flourishing. Neither have I been inattentive to the interests and advancement of my family, having always proposed for my imitation the example of my grandfather Cosimo, who watched over his public and his private concerns with equal vigilance. Having now attained the object of my cares, I trust I may be allowed to enjoy the sweets of leisure, to share in the reputation of my fellow-citizens, and to exult in the glory of my native city.’
‘The passage is very interesting,’ said the Poet, ‘and serves to strengthen one’s impression of the sanity and completeness of Lorenzo’s talents. But is it not also another contribution to the vanity of human wishes and the fatuity of human self-complacency? I do not think Lorenzo ever attained to that enjoyment of dignity with leisure of which he speaks; and assuredly he had not long been dead before the glory of his native city, in the sense in which he used the phrase, passed away.‘
‘If one is to believe Politian,’ I said, ‘either the famous death-bed colloquy with Savonarola never took place, or it left but little impression on the dying man.’
‘That is a story,’ said the Poet, ‘one would part with unwillingly. But what is it that Politian says?’
‘That to judge by Lorenzo’s behaviour, and that of his attendants, when he was dying, you would have thought it was they who momentarily expected that fate, and he alone that was exempt from it.‘
‘There is no tomb nor inscription, is there,’ asked Lamia, ‘to mark the place that received his ashes, while his unworthier successors have a sumptuous monument designed by Michelangelo, whom in the budding days of his genius Lorenzo used to place, out of respect for his talent, above his own sons at table?’
‘I suppose,’ said Veronica, ‘he was paid for the monument he executed, and could not execute the one the cost of which there was no one to defray. But do not let us forget that what he felt concerning the contrast between the earlier and the later Medici is for ever embodied in his famous quatrain. Repeat it to us, Lamia.’
‘With pleasure, if I can.‘
‘Grato m’ è il sonno, e più l’ esser di sasso,
Mentre che il danno e la vergogna dura.