The young Duchess Margaret fled precipitately from the Via Larga to the fortress of San Giovanni, which Alessandro had only just built and fortified.  With her went three young children—­not her own indeed, for she had proved to be barren,—­but children she found in her husband’s house.  By Florentine law they were recognised as belonging to the family, and no one troubled about their precise origin.

These little ones were probably the issue of the Duke by a handsome contadina employed in the palace, who went by the name of Anna da Massa.  Francesco Guicciardini, however, says she was the Marchesa da Massa, a noble lady, one of Alessandro’s chief favourites.  Giulio, some five years old, became a soldier, and died Prior of the new military Order of St Stephen of Pisa; Porczia died an enclosed nun in Rome; and Giulia married Francesco de’ Barthelemmi.

Margaret herself married Ottavio Farnese, Prince of Nepi and Camerino, a lad of sixteen years of age, and, a second time, being left a widow, she espoused the Duke of Parma, and died in 1586—­fifty years after her ill-starred marriage with Alessandro de’ Medici.

It was reputed that shortly before his assassination, a Greek soothsayer one day stopped the Duke’s cortege in the street, and cried out, so that all might hear:  “Alessandro, Duke of Florence, thou shall be slain by a relative, a thin man, small of stature, and dark of countenance.  He will have one accomplice.  Beware!”

As for Lorenzino, whilst no action was taken publicly in Florence against him—­for, secretly all men, and openly the majority, praised his act—­there was a party whose members were sworn to avenge Alessandro’s blood.  They enlisted a service of irreconcilables to track the murderer to his death.

For eleven long years Lorenzino traversed land and sea, pursued, not only by relentless foes, but tormented by an accusing conscience.  He was no Brutus to himself, but relapsed once more into a craven, stalking coward.  At length retribution overtook him, for two soldiers, devoted to Alessandro’s memory, hunted him down in the waterways of Venice, to which he had returned.  One day, in May 1548, Bedo da Volterra and Cecchino da Bibonna caught him by the Rialto, unattended and unarmed, and their daggers did the work as effectively for him as did his sword for Duke Alessandro!

What became of Lorenzino’s body nobody knew and nobody cared, probably it was tossed by his assassins into the Grand Canal, and being washed out into the sea, will await that day when the deep shall yield up all that is therein.

Some authorities state that a reward of ten thousand gold florins was offered for his head, that his effigy was burnt with every mark of opprobrium in the Piazza della Signoria, and that the rabble pulled his house down and burnt out the site.

CHAPTER III

MARIA, GIOVANNI, AND GARZIA.