lling him outright and extirpating his party. Machiavelli, in one of
his profoundest and most cynical critiques, remarks that few men know
how to be thoroughly bad with honour to themselves. Their will is
evil; but the grain of good in them--some fear of public opinion,
some repugnance to committing a signal crime--paralyses their arm at
the moment when it ought to have been raised to strike. He instances
Gian Paolo Baglioni's omission to murder Julius II., when that Pope
placed himself within his clutches at Perugia. He might also have
instanced Rinaldo degli Albizzi's refusal to push things to
extremities by murdering Cosimo. It was the combination of despotic
violence in the exile of Cosimo with constitutional moderation in the
preservation of his life, that betrayed the weakness of the oligarchs
and restored confidence to the Medicean party.

IX

In the course of the year 1434 this party began to hold up its head.
Powerful as the Albizzi were, they only retained the government by
artifice; and now they had done a deed which put at nought their
former arts and intrigues. A Signory favourable to the Medici came
into office, and on September 26th, 1434, Rinaldo in his turn was
summoned to the palace and declared a rebel. He strove to raise the
forces of his party, and entered the piazza at the head of eight
hundred men. The menacing attitude of the people, however, made
resistance perilous. Rinaldo disbanded his troops, and placed himself
under the protection of Pope Eugenius IV., who was then resident in
Florence. This act of submission proved that Rinaldo had not the
courage or the cruelty to try the chance of civil war. Whatever his
motives may have been, he lost his hold upon the State beyond
recovery. On September 29th, a new parliament was summoned; on October
2nd, Cosimo was recalled from exile and the Albizzi were banished. The
intercession of the Pope procured for them nothing but the liberty to
leave Florence unmolested. Einaldo turned his back upon the city he
had governed, never to set foot in it again. On October 6th, Cosimo,
having passed through Padua, Ferrara, and Modena like a conqueror,
reentered the town amid the plaudits of the people, and took up his
dwelling as an honoured guest in the Palace of the Republic. The
subsequent history of Florence is the history of his family. In after
years the Medici loved to remember this return of Cosimo. His
triumphal reception was painted in fresco on the