some human decoration of the Campanile.
Without a moment's hesitation, spurring his horse, he rode swiftly
towards the Porta della Croce, and set off into the open country--a
fugitive!

Francesco de' Pazzi, after the slaughter of Giuliano, escaped to his
uncle's house, and stripping himself, received attention to his wound,
which was of a very serious nature. He was not, however, left very long
in peace, for the cry had gone forth in the streets--"Death to the
traitors!" "Down with the Pazzi and the Salviati!" "Fire their houses!"
The sword, still reeking red with the bluest blood of Florence, was
swiftly crossed by the sword of retribution. Francesco was dragged
forth, naked as he was from his bed, buffeted, pelted, and spat upon,
they thrust him with staves, weapons, hands and feet, right through the
Piazza della Signoria; up they forced him to the giddy gallery of the
Campanile, and then, flinging his bleeding, battered body out among his
bloodthirsty comrades, they left him to dangle and to die with them
there! The Archbishop, still in his gorgeous vestments, turned in
fury, as he hung head downwards in that ghastly company, and, seizing
his fiendish confederate, fixed his teeth in his bare breast, and so the
guilty pair expiated their hellish rage--unlovely in their lives,
revolting in their deaths!

* * * * *

Poor Giuliano's corpse was left weltering in his blood, where he had
been done to death, outside the choir screen of the Duomo. At length he
was picked up tenderly by the good _Misericordia_. His terrible wounds
were reverently washed and his godlike body prepared for sepulture. News
of his assassination had been swiftly carried out to Careggi, and Domina
Lucrezia, bracing herself for the afflicting sight, hastened to lay his
fair head in her lap, a very real replica of "_La Pieta_"--Blessed Mary
and her Son.

Ah! how she and the women who bore her company wept for the beloved
dead. Ah! how with tender fingers they counted each gaping wound. Ah!
how gently they cut off locks of his rich hair, as memorials of a sweet
young life.

They buried Giuliano that same evening, with all the honours due to his
rank, amid the tears of an immense concourse of people--stayed for a
while from their savage man-hunt. To the Medici shrine of San Lorenzo
they bore him--the yellow light of the wax candles revealing the tombs
of Cosimo and Piero.

"There was not a citizen," says Macchiavell