Giovio’s account of this strange intimacy may be added, since it completes the picture I have drawn from Varchi:—­’Lorenzo made himself the accomplice and instrument of those amorous amusements for which the Duke had an insatiable appetite, with the object of deceiving him.  He was singularly well furnished with all the scoundrelly arts and trained devices of the pander’s trade; composed fine verses to incite to lust; wrote and represented comedies in Italian; and pretended to take pleasure only in such tricks and studies.  Therefore he never carried arms like other courtiers, and feigned to be afraid of blood, a man who sought tranquillity at any price.  Besides, he bore a pallid countenance and melancholy brow, walking alone, talking very little and with few persons.  He haunted solitary places apart from the city, and showed such plain signs of hypochondria that some began covertly to pass jokes on him.  Certain others, who were more acute, suspected that he was harbouring and devising in his mind some terrible enterprise.’  The Prologue to Lorenzino’s own comedy of ‘Aridosiso’ brings the sardonic, sneering, ironical man vividly before us.  He calls himself ’un certo omiciatto, che non e nessun di voi che veggendolo non l’avesse a noia, pensando che egli abbia fatto una commedia;’ and begs the audience to damn his play to save him the tedium of writing another.  Criticised by the light of his subsequent actions, this prologue may even be understood to contain a covert promise of the murder he was meditating.

‘In this way,’ writes Varchi, ’the Duke had taken such familiarity with Lorenzo, that, not content with making use of him as a ruffian in his dealings with women, whether religious or secular, maidens or wives or widows, noble or plebeian, young or elderly, as it might happen, he applied to him to procure for his pleasure a half-sister of Lorenzo’s own mother, a young lady of marvellous beauty, but not less chaste than beautiful, who was the wife of Lionardo Ginori, and lived not far from the back entrance to the palace of the Medici.’  Lorenzino undertook this odious commission, seeing an opportunity to work his designs against the Duke.  But first he had to form an accomplice, since he could not hope to carry out the murder without help.  A bravo, called Michele del Tavolaccino, but better known by the nickname of Scoronconcolo, struck him as a fitting instrument.  He had procured this man’s pardon for a homicide, and it appears that the fellow retained a certain sense of gratitude.  Lorenzino began by telling the man there was a courtier who put insults upon him, and Scoronconcolo professed his readiness to kill the knave.  ’Sia chi si voglia; io l’ammazzero, se fosse Cristo.’  Up to the last minute the name of Alessandro was not mentioned.  Having thus secured his assistant, Lorenzino chose a night when he knew that Alessandro Vitelli, captain of the Duke’s guard, would be from home.  Then, after supper, he whispered in Alessandro’s ear that at last he had seduced