' Antella
with a tell-tale letter on his person, and a bitter rancour against the
Medici in his heart, was an incalculable event. It was not possible, in
spite of the careful pretexts with which his agency had been guarded,
that Tito should escape implication: he had never expected this in case
of any wide discovery concerning the Medicean plots. But his quick mind
had soon traced out the course that would secure his own safety with the
fewest unpleasant concomitants. It is agreeable to keep a whole skin;
but the skin still remains an organ sensitive to the atmosphere.

His reckoning had not deceived him. That night, before he returned
home, he had secured the three results for which he most cared: he was
to be freed from all proceedings against him on account of complicity
with the Mediceans; he was to retain his secretaryship for another year,
unless he previously resigned it; and, lastly, the price by which he had
obtained these guarantees was to be kept as a State secret. The price
would have been thought heavy by most men; and Tito himself would rather
not have paid it.

He had applied himself first to win the mind of Francesco Valori, who
was not only one of the Ten under whom he immediately held his
secretaryship, but one of the special council appointed to investigate
the evidence of the plot. Francesco Valori, as we have seen, was the
head of the Piagnoni, a man with certain fine qualities that were not
incompatible with violent partisanship, with an arrogant temper that
alienated his friends, nor with bitter personal animosities--one of the
bitterest being directed against Bernardo del Nero. To him, in a brief
private interview, after obtaining a pledge of secrecy, Tito avowed his
own agency for the Mediceans--an agency induced by motives about which
he was very frank, declaring at the same time that he had always
believed their efforts futile, and that he sincerely preferred the
maintenance of the popular government; affected to confide to Valori, as
a secret, his own personal dislike for Bernardo del Nero; and, after
this preparation, came to the important statement that there was another
Medicean plot, of which, if he obtained certain conditions from the
government, he could, by a journey to Siena and into Romagna, where
Piero de' Medici was again trying to gather forces, obtain documentary
evidence to lay before the council. To this end it was essential that
his character as a Medicean agent shoul