Some time before, Benvenuto Cellini, who himself tells the circumstance, had asked an audience of the duke, to show the coin on which, by his order, he had engraved his portrait, and ask leave to finish his work in Rome.
The reverse of the medal was yet undesigned, and the duke, unwilling his artist should depart, desired Lorenzino (present as usual) would advise him to stay. The young man obeyed; and Benvenuto, having argued for the necessity of his repairing to Rome, where his workshop was, suddenly turning to the favourite, added, “And you, my lord, who are both learned and witty, will you not supply a reverse for this coin?”
“I was at that moment,” said Lorenzino gravely, “thinking of such a one as might be worthy of his excellency.”
The duke said, smiling, “Give it him, Lorenzo, and he will remain.”
“I will,” replied the favourite, with a sarcastic expression of countenance; “as soon as to do so lies in my power, and I hope it will astonish the world.”
Alessandro laughed, and Benvenuto departed.
The 6th of January, 1537, Lorenzino informed the duke, that Caterina Ginori had promised to meet him that night, but not at the palace. She had chosen for greater secresy the favourite’s house, to which a private passage, constructed by Alessandro’s command, led from the ducal residence. Masked, and holding his sword in his hand, but not having beneath his cloak the cuirass which he constantly wore by day to protect him from his suspected Florentines, the duke arrived at the place of rendezvous; and Lorenzino quitting him to seek the lady, he stretched himself on a couch to await his return—his weapon laid on his pillow, but the sword knot so twisted by Lorenzino’s hand, that to draw it forth was impossible. The assassin lingered some time: he had placed as watch on the duke a man in whom he could confide, named Scoroucoucolo; and he staid to prepare him for a murder without revealing who was to be the victim. Returning softly to the chamber, they saw that the duke slept, and Lorenzino, profiting by the opportunity, plunged his sword in his body. The duke sprang up notwithstanding, and, seizing a footstool for shield against his enemy, rushed towards the door, but Scoroucoucolo struck him with his knife on the cheek, and Alessandro, dropping the footstool, sprang furiously not on him, but on Lorenzino. “Traitor,” he shouted, and these were the sole words he spoke, “traitor, I did not expect this from thee.” Lorenzino, weak of body, inferior in strength to his antagonist, even though wounded, by a violent effort forced him back upon the couch, and held his hand on his mouth to stifle his cries, but he felt the impossibility of ending his fearful work alone; and while Alessandro in his struggles bit his thumb so violently as almost to sever it from his hand, he called to Scoroucoucolo for aid, and the bravo cut the duke’s throat, while Lorenzino exerted his last strength in holding him down; but, recognising him when the deed was done, he had well nigh fallen from fear. He followed Lorenzino, who fled first to Bologna, and then to Venice, to join Filippo Strozzi: forgetting his interest in the republic in his private fears; proving himself throughout a coward; and having wandered long, evading the snares laid for him, died at last the death he merited by the swords of two Florentine soldiers of Alessandro’s guard, assassins also.
To-day and every day we have visited the Galleria with its collection of statues and paintings, which would alone make a pilgrimage to Florence an enjoyment not to be forgotten; but though even the enthusiasm of guide-books could not here succeed in cooling mine, though we offered, like the rest, our quota of homage to the “Venus of the tribune,” acknowledging that no copy conveyed an idea of her perfection, and no praise could exaggerate it; though we have lingered before the marks of the immortality of those who have long been dust, and brought away recollections which summon back as the loadstone iron, you will not expect a description of all which has been so often criticised before both ill and well, and in either case can convey no definite ideas on the subject. On the splendid collection of the Palazzo> Pitti the same reasons make me silent also, for one must write either a mere catalogue of names or a volume, and both would weary; though it contains the battles of Salvator Rosa and his conspiracy of Catiline, and Guido’s Cleopatra and the Madonna della Seggiola of Raphael, and the Fates of Michael Angelo with their purity of outline and coldness of colouring, perhaps resembling the painter’s disposition and life, and the productions of Titian and Vandyck and Paul Veronese and others, not unworthy of being companions of these, forming a mass of precious things, among which there is not one counterfeit. I found the fine suites of rooms occupied by them, always full of students, to whom the grand duke’s liberal feelings afford every facility for improvement in their art. Yesterday afternoon we passed in the Boboli gardens, which fine old trees and irregularity of ground render, if less majestic, far more beautiful than those of Versailles, which took them for model. It was in the year 1418, that Luca Pitti purchased for about £230 sterling of that time, the ground on which the palace was constructed; destined, at the ruin of that rich and proud family, to be sold to the Medici, but to retain its original name, rather in token of the downfall of the first possessors than of the modesty of the last. Its purchaser was Cosmo de’ Medici, son of John of the black bands, elected duke after the murder of Alexander, and husband of the unfortunate Eleonora of Toledo, who died of grief for the loss of her slaughtered sons, or, as some records assert, by the duke’s hand also. Cosmo united in his person qualities the most opposite, patient as a botanist in the Boboli gardens which himself had planted; a laborious chemist, methodical even to minutiæ in the sciences which were his amusement; calm as persevering, yet a man of terrible and uncontrolled passions, who assassinated a nobleman in his own halls and with his own hand, and, in the four first years of his reign, condemned to death by default four hundred and thirty emigrants, placing a price on the heads of five and thirty. In 1562, during the hunting season, he had gone to enjoy this amusement, which, notwithstanding his severe and sombre disposition, he preferred, to the castle of Rosignano in the Maremma, an unhealthy part of the state of Sienna. While there, the two youths, one aged nineteen, the other but fifteen years, died suddenly, and their mother a day or two after. An attempt was made to persuade the Florentines that the pestilential air of the country, marshy and unwholesome, had produced the short and fatal illness which carried off three persons in so brief a time, but it became known that, on their return from a hunting party, a dispute had arisen between the brothers, at the close of which the eldest, Cardinal John, had received a mortal blow from the boy Don Garcia. The enraged duke sprang upon his second son and laid him dead at his feet; their mother was a spectator of this scene; she might well have died of sorrow as was averred, but many whispered that a witness of his conduct so nearly interested, was not to be borne by Duke Cosmo.
On the death of Eleonora of Toledo, Cosmo had attached himself to a fair young lady of the house of Albizzi, named Eleonora also, and with a love so excessive, that it was feared he might marry. A person of his household thought it well to communicate these fears to his son, and Francesco had the temerity to speak on the subject to his father. The old duke’s violent temper roused, his heir had almost fallen its sacrifice; the presence of the informer only saved him, for Cosmo, like a wild animal baffled in his first spring, rushed on this easier prey and plunged his sword into his bosom. It was Cosmo, who having been crowned grand duke in St. Peter’s at Rome, returned to his Palazzo Pitti, to marry there the poor and beautiful Camilla Martelli, who replaced in his affections the second Eleonora, and Francis, in whose favour he had abdicated, dared make no further observation, since he himself, though husband of the austere and pious arch-duchess Jane, was the lover of Bianca Capello. Well known as is the latter’s romantic story, its place is here recalled by the walls in which she was the light love and the regal mistress; and the palace court where was held the joust in her honour, in which Duke Francis broke a lance.