"What with ordering, insinuating, guessing, hinting, tolerating, feigning, and the like, if this cause had to be tried before worldly judges, the law-gnawing advocates (I mean the bad ones, for to the good ones I bow reverentially, and profess myself their most humble servant) would find so many limitations and distinctions, that certainly no one could condemn you; but before God, one does not appear through lawyers: do you suppose that you can hide this stain with your glove, or pretend that it is a ruby?"
"Ungrateful!—Unkind man! How much did my enemies give you to make me die of rage? Are these the manners to be used before your lord, who, if he willed, could break you in two like a reed? And at the very moment, too, that he is taking your interest to heart, from a desire of saving your reputation. But I ought to have known that it would have been labor lost; it would be as well to try to wash the Pucci's coat-of-arms."[34]
"I beg pardon, your Highness, I had no idea of irritating you: I said that merely for talk, being en famille. If any one dared to speak disrespectfully of your Highness in my presence, I swear to you on the word of a gentleman, that I would run him through with my sword. Be assured of this, Francesco, you will never have better friends than your brothers, and you never seem to care about it; you prefer a Serguidi, a Belisario Vinta to them, and in addition to that you allow such men to ill-treat us. Francesco, you complain of us, but in truth you are not just. Let us throw aside all bitterness."
"Well, then, I discovered the infamous contaminator of your dignity, and have killed him."
"Poor knight! Well, he deserved it, but he was a good fellow"——
"And who told you that he was a knight?"
"Bernardino Antinori, whom you caused to be hung in the prison of the Bargello? Who told me? That is a curious question! Who told me? Certainly, some one who knew. Francesco, allow me to say half-a-dozen words in my own way, openly, freely, and as my heart dictates, although you may consider them, as usual, as emanating from a strange brain. We can do what we like, but with one condition, which is this: that we must let people talk. The persons whom we employ in such affairs are baseborn, and supported by iniquity; if they could find some one who would throw them a larger crust of bread, they would do to us, what, commanded by us, they now do to others. Do you hope for fidelity or secresy in such degraded men? In taverns and in their disgraceful orgies, they pour in wine, and pour out words of blood, very often true, but oftener a thousand times exaggerated; and among the common mass of the people who know us little, we find accumulated against us such an enormous treasury of hatred, that it is frightful to look at."
"I will presently. Add to it the curse of the pen. The pen is an infernal invention. I, for my part, think that the devil, falling down from heaven, lost the feathers from his wings by a thunderbolt of Saint Michael, and these quills fell upon the earth, and men gathered and sharpened them, and now use them as arrows, poisoned by that worst of venom—ink. Who knows how many traders at this moment, under an item for wool, or an account of a transaction in silk, have registered: 'Item, to-day, the —— of the month of —— A.D. so and so, Francesco dei Medici caused the Knight Bernardo Antinori to be strangled for his intrigues with Donna Eleonora of Toledo, wife of Don Pietro de Medici!'[35] And besides the merchants, there are the philosophers, the historians, and other literary men, to whom I always show a pleasant face, since there are no means of putting them out of the world. These we cannot silence; the best way is to bear with them patiently, and by giving them sometimes flattery, sometimes bread, induce them to write according to our pleasure.
"There lived no such Augustus as the line