Tell Madonna Clarice that Piero and all the other children are as well as ever I saw them, and I hope they will continue so. Do your best to recover and return soon quite cured and in good health, then everything else will go well.
On ’Change money is abundant for everywhere, save Lyons, for which place all the merchants are buyers, particularly those who used to be sellers. I think some one must be working to send supplies by some other channel. But I do not understand these things, or know whether it is true, still I think you ought to be informed of everything: if my news bores you, either tell me, or tell Ser Piero to open my letters and not to show them to you.
Do order them to write often to us. I commend myself to you.—In Florence the last day of the year 1484 (24th March 1485).
Ser Francesco sends you an abstract of what little there is of public matters.
Niccolò Michelozzi.[314]
Matteo Franco to Ser Piero Dovizi Da Bibbiena, Chancellor of Lorenzo de’ Medici, wherever he may be
Salve, o alter ego.
Good-bye Ser Piero, good-bye Franco, good-bye Lorenzo, Butti, Franceschi, good-bye, good-bye, &c. We parted at Capitulo near Bagno a Morba. Florence having quitted Pisa,[315] we came gaily singing and joking to the mill on this side of Monte Castelli, where we found twenty-five soldiers with shields and spears whom we had seen from above, when we said to one another, “Who are those fellows down there?” and we all shouted “Palle, Palle”; they replied, “Palle, Palle e Orso, Orso,” and as we came nearer the shouts of Palle and Orso redoubled. We then saw they were men sent from Monte Castelli to escort us, &c. They wanted us to enter the townlet, but we declined, so they came with us down into the plain where was a crowd of women with faces as wrinkled as chestnut cakes, but all very merry and happy with tables spread out with wine, puff pastry, &c. We drank in haste, and keeping one of the soldiers as a guide discharged the others, and went on our journey singing and chatting gaily. Passing by deserted Monte Guidi, half-way down the hill we met a priest with his frock tucked up and so out of breath he might have come from Assisi, who said he was a friend of Donnino,[316] and implored us to dismount at his church and house, he was so exhausted and ran up and down so incessantly, that if he did not go and be bled I fear that by this time he is no more. God help him. We left, or rather we did not stop, and passed down below Casoli without entering, and about four miles this side of the village Martino Ghezo and Martino Moro caught us up, not having been able to keep up with us as we rode fast. They told us that on the other side of Casoli they met the so-much-longed-for Nannina[317] in a carriage, and that she asked about Lorenzo and Madonna Clarice. Hearing that Madonna Clarice had passed, and that Lorenzo had gone to Pisa, she was, they said, in despair, and showed great sorrow at not having seen Lorenzo, or even having been able to talk to Madonna Clarice. When Madonna heard this she several times lamented the bad luck of their missing each other, &c.
And thus, till about two miles from Colle di Val d’Elsa, we continued singing, joking, and talking. Then we became almost dumb, for nearly all our words migrated into a brother of Antonio del Pela who came to meet us, and conducted us into the tumbledown and ruined village of Colle to the house of the said Antonio. He came forward with such a river and flood of words that he drowned his brother, and us, and all who were near, and showed that he was truly the elder and the better brother. On entering the hall we found about thirty-five members of his family—girls, women, and children. My bore immediately began: “Madonna Clarice, this is my daughter, come forward, kiss the lady’s hand; and this is my granddaughter, come forward, touch her gown. And this one, and this one. And these little ones are all my grandchildren; hold yourselves up, think of your manners; this one is to be a priest, this one a nun, to this one Madonna Lucrezia stood godmother, this one I have just given in marriage, this one makes Venetian fringe, that one lace.” Plague take him. If I had not pulled him away he would have cast a spell on us all. But by asserting how tired Madonna Clarice and we all were I managed to damp his ardour. We arrived about twenty-two or twenty-three of the clock, and after resting we went to see paper made,[318] and returned to fetch Madonna Clarice, who thought it a pretty thing, and was much interested in the machines, the water, the air, &c. Then we went back and supped about one of the clock: a few wafers, cakes, and trebbiano,[319] salad and pickles, boiled fowl, and kid: and then young pigeons roasted, and I know not what preparation of fowl, marzipan, sweets, and comfits, &c.
Before supper the Commune of Colle made an offering to Madonna of corn, marzipan, wine, sweetmeats, &c., presented by eloquent orators, three out of the number. The substance was that as Lorenzo, whom they had expected, had not come, they presented all to her as being a second Lorenzo, with many excuses for the smallness of the gift owing to their poverty, and begged her to commend them and the town to Lorenzo. Madonna, by God, replied well and briefly, saying that they were not friends as they declared, for had they been they would have known that Lorenzo and herself would protect them without expecting gifts, which were rather things pertaining to strangers than to good friends. “On the one hand, you complain and ask me to represent to Lorenzo the poverty and the needs of yourselves and of your town, and then you spend money in these things. I take the will for the deed and give all back to you; for if I kept them I should only give them to the town for the love of God, so I bestow them on you who are poorer than I.” There was a great ado because they steadfastly refused to take the things away, alleging that there were plots against them, &c. Ser Giovanni Antonio and I sent them back by some of our people, keeping four flasks of wine and some marzipan to content them, and to show we wished them well.