the exiles would return to Florence, and that he would enjoy an honourable life, an immortality of glorious renown?  Did envy for his cousin’s greatness and resentment of his undisguised contempt—­the passions of one who had been used for vile ends—­conscious of self-degradation and the loss of honour, yet mindful of his intellectual superiority—­did these emotions take fire in him and mingle with a scholar’s reminiscences of antique heroism, prompting him to plan a deed which should at least assume the show of patriotic zeal, and prove indubitable courage in its perpetrator?  Did he, again, perhaps imagine, being next in blood to Alessandro and direct heir to the ducal crown by the Imperial Settlement of 1530, that the city would elect her liberator for her ruler?  Alfieri and Niccolini, having taken, as it were, a brief in favour of tyrannicide, praised Lorenzino as a hero.  De Musset, who wrote a considerable drama on his story, painted him as a roue corrupted by society, enfeebled by circumstance, soured by commerce with an uncongenial world, who hides at the bottom of his mixed nature enough of real nobility to make him the leader of a forlorn hope for the liberties of Florence.  This is the most favourable construction we can put upon Lorenzo’s conduct.  Yet some facts of the case warn us to suspend our judgment.  He seems to have formed no plan for the liberation of his fellow-citizens.  He gave no pledge of self-devotion by avowing his deed and abiding by its issues.  He showed none of the qualities of a leader, whether in the cause of freedom or of his own dynastic interests, after the murder.  He escaped as soon as he was able, as secretly as he could manage, leaving the city in confusion, and exposing himself to the obvious charge of abominable treason.  So far as the Florentines knew, his assassination of their Duke was but a piece of private spite, executed with infernal craft.  It is true that when he seized the pen in exile, he did his best to claim the guerdon of a patriot, and to throw the blame of failure on the Florentines.  In his Apology, and in a letter written to Francesco de’ Medici, he taunts them with lacking the spirit to extinguish tyranny when he had slain the tyrant.  He summons plausible excuses to his aid—­the impossibility of taking persons of importance into his confidence, the loss of blood he suffered from his wound, the uselessness of rousing citizens whom events proved over-indolent for action.  He declares that he has nothing to regret.  Having proved by deeds his will to serve his country, he has saved his life in order to spend it for her when occasion offered.  But these arguments, invented after the catastrophe, these words, so bravely penned when action ought to have confirmed his resolution, do not meet the case.  It was no deed of a true hero to assassinate a despot, knowing or half knowing that the despot’s subjects would immediately elect another.  Their languor could not, except rhetorically, be advanced in defence of his own flight.