SECOND BOOK.
PIERO DE’ MEDICI.
FIRST YEARS OF LORENZO THE MAGNIFICENT.
CHAPTER I.
PIERO DE’ MEDICI, HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS.
At the death of Cosimo de’ Medici, his descendants, besides his natural son Carlo, who once more entered the ecclesiastical order, consisted of Piero, surnamed the Gouty (il Gottoso), and his four children. Piero was born in 1416, and was now forty-eight years old. He was a youth when the swift change of fortune in his father’s life took place, which, at first threatening his house with ruin, had suddenly raised it to supreme power, and his manhood passed during the envied but not seriously disputed exercise of that power. His health was feeble, yet this did not hinder him from undertaking various civil offices, and may, perhaps, have been of service to him by covering his mediocre character and intellect, and enabling him to preserve that middle course which is so difficult for the head of a party filled with great and ambitious men. He was a sensible, quiet man, experienced in business, with a sound judgment and far more kindliness of heart and sincerity than his father, but without his political acuteness, knowledge of men, and talent for steering safely among the numerous rocks that beset his position.