,--that of usurpers, that of conquerors.

As soon as Filippo Strozzi returned to Florence he re-established the
preceding form of government and ousted Ippolito de' Medici, another
bastard, and the very Alessandro with whom, at the later period of which
we are now writing, he was travelling to Livorno. Having completed this
change of government, he became alarmed at the evident inconstancy of
the people of Florence, and, fearing the vengeance of Clement VII., he
went to Lyon to superintend a vast house of business he owned there,
which corresponded with other banking-houses of his own in Venice, Rome,
France, and Spain. Here we find a strange thing. These men who bore the
weight of public affairs and of such a struggle as that with the Medici
(not to speak of contentions with their own party) found time and
strength to bear the burden of a vast business and all its speculations,
also of banks and their complications, which the multiplicity of
coinages and their falsification rendered even more difficult than it is
in our day. The name "banker" comes from the _banc_ (Anglice, _bench_)
upon which the banker sat, and on which he rang the gold and silver
pieces to try their quality. After a time Filippo found in the death of
his wife, whom he adored, a pretext for renewing his relations with the
Republican party, whose secret police becomes the more terrible in
all republics, because every one makes himself a spy in the name of a
liberty which justifies everything.

Filippo returned to Florence at the very moment when that city was
compelled to adopt the yoke of Alessandro; but he had previously gone
to Rome and seen Pope Clement VII., whose affairs were now so prosperous
that his disposition toward Strozzi was much changed. In the hour of
triumph the Medici were so much in need of a man like Filippo--were it
only to smooth the return of Alessandro--that Clement urged him to take
a seat at the Council of the bastard who was about to oppress the city;
and Strozzi consented to accept the diploma of a senator.

But, for the last two years and more, he had seen, like Seneca and
Burrhus, the beginnings of tyranny in his Nero. He felt himself, at the
moment of which we write, an object of so much distrust on the part
of the people and so suspected by the Medici whom he was constantly
resisting, that he was confident of some impending catastrophe.
Consequently, as soon as he heard from Alessandro of the negotiation for
Catherine