Innocent
VIII, was invested with the _insignia_ in the Abbey Church of Fiesole.
Although then within a month of his end, although, moreover, so weak that
he was unable to attend the investiture mass or to head his table at the
banquet which followed, he caused himself to be carried in a litter into
the hall, where he publicly paid reverence to his son as a prince of
the Church. He then embraced him as a father and gave him his paternal
blessing. That done, and after addressing a few words of welcome to his
guests collectively, he was slowly borne back to his chamber to die.
Nevermore was he seen in public.

His ruling passion was, however, strong in death. In place of surrounding
himself with clergy, his last hours were spent with the humanists and
scholars he had loved so well. To his beautiful villa of Careggi, and
to that room facing the south which he called his own, he retired, and
summoned Ficino, Poliziano, and Pico della Mirandola to bear him company
until he dipped his feet in the River of Death. They discussed many
things, but principally the consolations afforded by philosophy. Then
they reverted to the subject of the classics, and to the valuable codices
which Lascaris was bringing back from Greece.

But hope at last burned low, and the physicians had to confess that the
case was beyond their skill. How rudimentary as regards medical science
that skill was may be judged from the fact that the staple remedy
prescribed by the great Milanese doctor, Lazaro da Ficino, who had been
called in to consult with Lorenzo's own medical man, Pier Leoni of
Spoleto, was a potion compounded of crushed pearls and jewels. As might
have been expected, such a treatment accelerated rather than retarded the
disease.

The last hours of Lorenzo, and particularly his historic interview with
Savonarola, have often been described and are to this day the subject
of debate. There are two sides to every story, and this one of the last
visit of the haughty prior of San Marco's to the dying Magnifico is no
exception. Poliziano relates the incident in one form, the followers
of Savonarola in another; but neither report is absolutely authentic.
Suffice it for us that Benedetto, writing a week after the Magnifico's
death, says of the matter: "Our dear friend and master died so nobly,
with all the patience, the reverence, the recognition of God which the
best of holy men and a soul divine could show, with words upon his lips
so kind, that