IV.—­THE FLIGHT OF LORENZINO DE’ MEDICI

Alessandro was dead.  His body fell to earth.  The two murderers, drenched with blood, lifted it up, and placed it on the bed, wrapped in the curtains, as they had found him first.  Then Lorenzino went to the window, which looked out upon the Via Larga, and opened it to rest and breathe a little air.  After this he called for Scoronconcolo’s boy, Il Freccia, and bade him look upon the dead man.  Il Freccia recognised the Duke.  But why Lorenzino did this, no one knew.  It seemed, as Varchi says, that, having planned the murder with great ability, and executed it with daring, his good sense and good luck forsook him.  He made no use of the crime he had committed; and from that day forward till his own assassination, nothing prospered with him.  Indeed, the murder of Alessandro appears to have been almost motiveless, considered from the point of view of practical politics.  Varchi assumes that Lorenzino’s burning desire of glory prompted the deed; and when he had acquired the notoriety he sought, there was an end to his ambition.  This view is confirmed by the Apology he wrote and published for his act.  It remains one of the most pregnant, bold, and brilliant pieces of writing which we possess in favour of tyrannicide from that epoch of insolent crime and audacious rhetoric.  So energetic is the style, and so biting the invective of this masterpiece, in which the author stabs a second time his victim, that both Giordani and Leopardi affirmed it to be the only true monument of eloquence in the Italian language.  If thirst for glory was Lorenzino’s principal incentive, immediate glory was his guerdon.  He escaped that same night with Scoronconcolo and Freccia to Bologna, where he stayed to dress his thumb, and then passed forward to Venice.  Filippo Strozzi there welcomed him as the new Brutus, gave him money, and promised to marry his two sons to the two sisters of the tyrant-killer.  Poems were written and published by the most famous men of letters, including Benedetto Varchi and Francesco Maria Molsa, in praise of the Tuscan Brutus, the liberator of his country from a tyrant.  A bronze medal was struck bearing his name, with a profile copied from Michelangelo’s bust of Brutus.  On the obverse are two daggers and a cup, and the date viii. id.  Jan.

The immediate consequence of Alessandro’s murder was the elevation of Cosimo, son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, and second cousin of Lorenzino, to the duchy.  At the ceremony of his investiture with the ducal honours, Cosimo solemnly undertook to revenge Alessandro’s murder.  In the following March he buried his predecessor with pomp in San Lorenzo.  The body was placed beside the bones of the Duke of Urbino in the marble chest of Michelangelo, and here not many years ago it was discovered.  Soon afterwards Lorenzino was declared a rebel.  His portrait was painted according to old Tuscan precedent, head