d precipitately from the Via Larga to the
fortress of San Giovanni, which Alessandro had only just built and
fortified. With her went three young children--not her own indeed, for
she had proved to be barren,--but children she found in her husband's
house. By Florentine law they were recognised as belonging to the
family, and no one troubled about their precise origin.

These little ones were probably the issue of the Duke by a handsome
_contadina_ employed in the palace, who went by the name of Anna da
Massa. Francesco Guicciardini, however, says she was the Marchesa da
Massa, a noble lady, one of Alessandro's chief favourites. Giulio, some
five years old, became a soldier, and died Prior of the new military
Order of St Stephen of Pisa; Porczia died an enclosed nun in Rome; and
Giulia married Francesco de' Barthelemmi.

Margaret herself married Ottavio Farnese, Prince of Nepi and Camerino, a
lad of sixteen years of age, and, a second time, being left a widow, she
espoused the Duke of Parma, and died in 1586--fifty years after her
ill-starred marriage with Alessandro de' Medici.

It was reputed that shortly before his assassination, a Greek soothsayer
one day stopped the Duke's cortege in the street, and cried out, so that
all might hear: "Alessandro, Duke of Florence, thou shall be slain by a
relative, a thin man, small of stature, and dark of countenance. He will
have one accomplice. Beware!"

As for Lorenzino, whilst no action was taken publicly in Florence
against him--for, secretly all men, and openly the majority, praised his
act--there was a party whose members were sworn to avenge Alessandro's
blood. They enlisted a service of irreconcilables to track the murderer
to his death.

For eleven long years Lorenzino traversed land and sea, pursued, not
only by relentless foes, but tormented by an accusing conscience. He was
no Brutus to himself, but relapsed once more into a craven, stalking
coward. At length retribution overtook him, for two soldiers, devoted to
Alessandro's memory, hunted him down in the waterways of Venice, to
which he had returned. One day, in May 1548, Bedo da Volterra and
Cecchino da Bibonna caught him by the Rialto, unattended and unarmed,
and their daggers did the work as effectively for him as did his sword
for Duke Alessandro!

What became of Lorenzino's body nobody knew and nobody cared, probably
it was tossed by his assassins into the Grand Canal, and being washed
out into the sea,