The plenary Parliament, having completed its labours, broke up immediately, and the excellent lords and worthy citizens hied them to their palaces, their banks, and their offices, more or less pleased with the morning’s work. Not a few reflected, rather grimly, that they had placed two young lives between themselves and the seat of supreme authority. Their sons might live to rule Florence, but their own chances had vanished for ever!
Lorenzo was not backward in gripping, with a firm hand, the reins of power. Young as he was, he had already formed his ideals and laid out his plans as to the best government of the State. The yearly symposia in the Casentino had been productive of much good in the training of the youthful ruler. The direction of his opinions was signified in that saying of his: “He who would live in Florence must know how to govern!”
The repetition of this phrase was perhaps indiscreet, and it caused searchings of heart, as the meaning of it was borne in upon the comprehensions of the least friendly of the citizens. Lorenzo was clearly set upon the aggrandisement of his house and the dependence of all others. Allowance was made for a lad’s impetuosity, but at the same time many a leader kept his hands tightly pressed upon the machinery of government.
Everyone perceived that the young Capo della Repubblica was in full possession of the solid grit of his pushful grandfather. He had not studied the careers of his famous ancestors, Salvestro, Giovanni, and Cosimo, for nothing. Indeed Piero, his father, in writing to his sons at Cafaggiuolo to acquaint them with the death of Cosimo, “Il Padre della Patria,” in 1463, had pointedly said: “Your mother and I offer the character and example of your grandfather to our sons.”
Besides these strong characteristics he had inherited, in a superlative degree, the shrewd common-sense of Piero, and his mother’s passionate love of Florence, with all her enthusiasm for what was pure, cultured, philanthropic, and religious. Niccolo Macchiavelli, somewhat unwillingly, admitted that—“Lorenzo has all the high-mindedness and liberality which anybody could expect in one occupying such an exalted station.”
Giuliano tacitly and contentedly accepted a less ambitious and responsible role. Whilst Lorenzo took the first place and occupied himself in questions of State policy and in the affairs of the family, Giuliano drew to himself all the younger men in physical exploit and mental effort. From boyhood addicted to sports and pastimes, he became facile princeps in all manly exercises.
“Il bel Giulio!” as he was called generally, was moreover the leader of fashion and the organiser of all the pageants and jousts with which Lorenzo and he delighted the citizens. Whilst devoting most of his time to fun and frolic, the young prince was acknowledged as one of the chief litterati, and a conspicuous ornament of the Platonic Academy.
The serious side to his character and his, studious disposition gained for him the gentle title of “Il Pensieroso.” His mother’s fond hope was that he should be named a Cardinal, not merely a Papal princeling, nor of course a religious reprobate—as, alas, most of the Cardinals were—but a devout wearer of the scarlet hat, and that one day he might even assume the triple tiara!
Anyhow Giuliano’s youth was as spotless as it might be amid unchaste surroundings. His passion for the bewitching Simonetta, “The Star of Genoa,” seems to have been the only serious romance of his life, and therein he never aroused Marco de’ Vespucci’s jealousy by his attentions to his young wife. Indeed the loves of “Il bel Giulio” and “La bella Simonetta” were the talk and the admiration of the whole city:—the Apollo or the Mercury of the New Athens with his Venus—Venus de’ Medici!