[Illustration:  THE FLOWER MARKET, FLORENCE]

Now Malavolti one night brought home with him to supper a servant of the Gonfaloniere’s called Fargannaccio, a pleasant man and very good company.  Supper over, Cosimo, who knew Fargannaccio of old, made a sign to Malavolti that he should leave them together.  When they were alone, Cosimo gave him an order to the master of the Ospedale di S. Maria Nuova for 1100 ducats, a thousand for the Gonfaloniere and the odd hundred for himself.  On receipt of this sum Bernardo became more moderate, and Cosimo was exiled to Padua.  “Wherever he passed,” says Machiavelli, “he was honourably received, visited publicly by the Venetians, and treated by them more like a sovereign than a prisoner.”  Truly the oligarchy had at last produced a despot.

The reception of Cosimo abroad seems to have frightened the Florentines, for within a year a Balia was chosen friendly disposed towards him.  Upon this Rinaldo and his friends took arms and proceeded to the Palazzo Vecchio, the Senate ordering the gates to be closed against them; protesting at the same time that they had no thought of recalling Cosimo.  At this time Eugenius IV, hunted out of Rome by the populace, was living at the convent of S. Maria Novella.  Perhaps fearing the tumult, perhaps bribed or persuaded by Cosimo’s friends, he sent Giovanni Vitelleschi to desire Rinaldo to speak with him.  Rinaldo agreed, and marched with all his company to S. Maria Novella.  They appear to have remained in conference all night, and at dawn Rinaldo dismissed his men.  What passed between them no man knows, but early in October 1434 the recall of Cosimo was decreed and Rinaldo with his son went into exile.  Cosimo was received, Machiavelli tells us, “with no less ostentation and triumph than if he had obtained some extraordinary victory; so great was the concourse of people, and so high the demonstration of their joy, that by an unanimous and universal concurrence he was saluted as the Benefactor of the people and the Father of his country.”  Thus the Medici established themselves in Florence.  Practically Prince of the Commune, though never so in name, Cosimo set himself to consolidate his power by a judicious munificence and every political contrivance known to him.  Thus, while he enriched the city with such buildings as his palace in Via Larga, the Convent of S. Marco, the Church of S. Lorenzo, he helped Francesco Sforza to establish himself as tyrant of Milan, and in the affairs of Florence always preferred war to peace, because he knew that, beggared, the Florentines must come to him.  Yet it was in his day that Florence became the artistic and intellectual capital of Italy.  Under his patronage and enthusiasm the Renaissance for the first time seems to have become sure of itself.  The humanists, the architects, the sculptors, the painters are, as it were, seized with a fury of creation; they discover new forms, and express themselves completely,