Neither Pope nor Emperor made any very energetic protests to Alessandro, but were busy with anxious personal enterprises—and self-interests usually exclude any other. True, Charles wrote to the Duke and questioned him about the death of Ippolito, and required that all the facts of the case should be laid before him, but the matter ended there. Alessandro made no reply!
In six months the sensation had blown over, and the Emperor visited Florence in gorgeous State on 24th April. He was royally entertained by Alessandro, but he made no friends among the nobles, and departed without bestowing the usual honours. The Medici Palace had been redecorated, and it witnessed a revival of the lavish hospitality of Lorenzo il Magnifico.
Margaret of Austria entered the city for her marriage with Alessandro on 19th July 1536. She came from Naples accompanied by the Vice-Queen and Cardinals Santi Quattro and Cibo. The nuptial Mass was sung at San Lorenzo, and then the whole city was given over to feasting and debauchery. “The young Duchess was serenely happy, for the Duke paid her great court, and she knew not that he paid as much to other women of all grades!” Banquets, masked balls, street pageants, Giostre, and musical comedies crowded one upon another.
Among the wedding guests was Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici, who held the Lordship of Piombino, the lineal descendant and heir of Cosimo, “Il Padre della Patria’s” brother Lorenzo. His father died when he was an infant, but his mother, Maria de’ Soderini—a woman possessed of all the prudence and culture of her family—devoted herself to his rearing and education. Just twenty-three years old, he was small of stature and slightly built, dark complexioned, and of a melancholy aspect. His health was indifferent, and he was liable to uncontrollable fits of passion: he was restless and dissatisfied, and the associate of low and evil companions.
In Rome—where he had lived in the Medici “happy family” of the Pope—he acquired the reputation of a coward and a provoker of disturbances. He was fond of defacing and mutilating ancient monuments, and became liable to pains and penalties from which Cardinal Ippolito rescued him. By his depraved and foolish habits he greatly incensed Clement, who at length dismissed him in disgrace. Lorenzo retired to Florence, where he was welcomed and entertained by Alessandro. In return for favours Lorenzo, nicknamed in Florence “Lorenzino,” “Lorenzo the Little,” became useful to the Duke and appointed himself spy-in-chief of the Florentine exiles. His studious character and his literary talent endowed him with another and a worthier sobriquet “Filosofo,” and he carried out the rôle by dressing as a Greek and living as a sybarite. Devoted to the study of the classics and encouraged by his sensuous tutor, Giovanni Francesco Zeffi, when not engaged in vulgar orgies, he translated Plato and other writers, and even composed a comedy, which he called L’Aridosio.
Lorenzino entered fully into the Duke’s life of profligacy and became his inseparable companion. Both of them admired physical charms and indulged in all physical passions: they set a base fashion in Florence, which degraded her men and women. They habitually made lewd jokes of everything human and divine, and were noted for their cruelty to animals. If Alessandro became execrated as “The Tyrant and Ravisher of Florence,” Lorenzino was scouted as “A monster and a miracle,” and his depreciative nickname underwent a new spelling—“Lorenzaccio,”— “Lorenzo the Terrible!”
Satiety of excesses produced a revulsion of feeling between the two debauchees. Alessandro began to show irritation at his companion’s freedom. The latter refused to be corrected, and into his mind came once more the inspiration of classical heroes of liberty and foes of oppression. Why should he not be a Florentine “Brutus,” and have his name engraved upon the pinnacle of fame as the “Saviour of his Country!” Lorenzino studied and studied well the part he now set himself to play.
Not a word did he breathe to man or woman of what was paramount in his mind, and he made not the slightest difference in his intercourse with Alessandro—indeed, he drew himself to him more intimately than ever. The Carnival of 1536 saw the maddest of all mad scenes, and everything and everybody ran wild riot. Disguised as country minstrels and mounted upon broken-down donkeys, the two comrades rode about the city, paying visits to their various mistresses and flatterers, and playing practical jokes upon the respectable citizens they encountered.
Returning one evening, weary with their follies, they supped together at the Palazzo Medici, and then Lorenzino inquired how they were to spend the night.