A Father’s Vengeance

“I will have no Cain in my family!” roared out Cosimo de’ Medici—­“Il Giovane,” Duke of Florence, in the forest of Rosignano.

“A Medico of the Medici,” prompt in action and suave in repose, his hand flew to his sword hilt, and the cruel, cold steel of a father’s wrath flashed in the face of Heaven!  Duchess Eleanora made one swift step forward, intent upon shielding her child, but she stood there transfixed with horror—­her arms and hands outstretched to the wide horizon in silent supplication, her tongue paralysed!

The kneeling boy grasped his father’s knees, weeping piteously, and crying aloud in vain for mercy.  Thrusting him from him, and spurning him with his heavy hunting-boot, he plunged furiously his gleaming blade into his son’s breast, until the point came out between his shoulderblades!

With one expiring yell of agony and terror, Garzia de’ Medici yielded up his fair young life, the victim of inexorable fate.  It was high moon, and the watchful stars, of course, could not behold the gruesome deed, but over the autumn sun was drawn a grey purple mist, and gloom settled upon the Maremma.  And as the elements paled and were silent, a hush overspread wild nature, not a beast in the thicket, not a bird on the bough, stirred.  Sighs siffled through the bracken and the heather, and the roar of the distant sea died away in moaning at the bar.

With a suffocating sob, as though stabbed to death herself, the Duchess swooned upon the ground, and, whilst the courtiers in the company hastened to her assistance, the huntsmen reverently covered the still quivering body of the young prince with their embroidered livery cloaks.

Not much more than a mile away another corpse was being gently borne by tender loving hands—­it was Giovanni’s, Garzia’s elder brother, the young Cardinal.

Giovanni de’ Medici was dead—­Garzia was dead; and two virgin souls were winging their flight to join their murdered sister Maria in the Paradise of Peace.

* * * * *

Cosimo, Duke of Florence, was the son of Giovanni de’ Medici—­called “delle Bande Nere” and Maria de’ Salviati.  Born in 1498, at Forli, Giovanni—­also known as “Giovannino” to distinguish him from his father Giovanni, “Il Popolano”—­was destined from his cradle to a military career.  With such a mother as Caterina, the natural daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, he was bound to acquire with her milk the instincts of a pushful personality.

Pope Leo X., who was a Florentine of the Florentines, extended his zealous patronage to the rearing and the training of his youthful relative.  If not a caster of horoscopes, he was a reader of character, and, son as he was of Lorenzo “Il Magnifico,” he foresaw a future for “Giovannino” fraught with immense importance to his family and his native city.