lected that his work would be incomplete
unless he treated five or six of the Duke's kindred in the same fashion.
The servant, however, who was neither a dare-devil nor a fool, said to
him--

"I think, sir, that you have done enough for the present, and that it
would be better to think of saving your own life than of taking the
lives of others, for should we be as long in making away with each of
them as we were in the case of the Duke, daylight would overtake our
enterprise before we could complete it, even should we find our enemies
unarmed."

Cowed by his guilty conscience, the gentleman followed the advice of his
servant, and taking him alone with him, repaired to a Bishop (4) whose
office it was to have the city gates opened, and to give orders to the
guard-posts.

4 Probably Cardinal Cybo, Alexander's chief minister, who
according to Sismondi, was the first to discover the
murder.--Ed.

"I have," said the gentleman to the Bishop, "this evening received
tidings that one of my brothers is at the point of death. I have just
asked leave of the Duke to go to him, and he has granted it me; and
I beg you to send orders that the guards may furnish me with two good
horses, and that the gatekeeper may let me through."

The Bishop, who regarded the gentleman's request in the same light as an
order from his master the Duke, forthwith gave him a note, by means of
which the gate was opened for him, and horses supplied to him as he had
requested; but instead of going to see his brother he betook himself
straight to Venice, where he had himself cured of the bites that he had
received from the Duke, and then passed over into Turkey. (5)

5 On leaving Florence, Lorenzo repaired first to Bologna
and then to Venice, where he informed Philip Strozzi of how
he had rid his country of the tyrant. After embracing him in
a transport, and calling him the Tuscan Brutus, Strozzi
asked the murderer's sisters, Laudamina and Magdalen de'
Medici, in marriage for his own sons, Peter and Robert. From
Venice Lorenzino issued a _memoire justificatif_, full of
quibbles and paradoxes, in which he tried to explain his
lack of energy after the murder by the indifference shown by
the Florentines. He took no part in the various enterprises
directed against Cosmo de' Medici, who had succeeded
Alexander at Florence. Indeed his chief concern was for his
own safety, whic