had come again.

XXIII

Fortune had been very favourable to the Medici. They had returned as
princes to Florence. Giovanni was Pope. Giuliano was Gonfalonier of
the Church. Giulio was Cardinal and Archbishop of Florence. Lorenzo
ruled the city like a sovereign. But this prosperity was no less brief
than it was brilliant. A few years sufficed to sweep off all the
chiefs of the great house. Giuliano died in 1516, leaving only a
bastard son Ippolito. Lorenzo died in 1519, leaving a bastard son
Alessandro, and a daughter, six days old, who lived to be the Queen of
France. Leo died in 1521. There remained now no legitimate male
descendants from the stock of Cosimo. The honours and pretensions of
the Medici devolved upon three bastards--on the Cardinal Giulio, and
the two boys, Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro was a
mulatto, his mother having been a Moorish slave in the Palace of
Urbino; and whether his father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base
groom, was not known for certain. To such extremities were the Medici
reduced. In order to keep their house alive, they were obliged to
adopt this foundling. It is true that the younger branch of the
family, descended from Lorenzo, the brother of Cosimo, still
flourished. At this epoch it was represented by Giovanni, the great
general known as the Invincible, whose bust so strikingly resembles
that of Napoleon. But between this line of the Medici and the elder
branch there had never been true cordiality. The Cardinal mistrusted
Giovanni. It may, moreover, be added, that Giovanni was himself doomed
to death in the year 1526.

Giulio de' Medici was left in 1521 to administer the State of Florence
single-handed. He was archbishop, and he resided in the city, holding
it with the grasp of an absolute ruler. Yet he felt his position
insecure. The republic had no longer any forms of self-government; nor
was there a magistracy to whom the despot could delegate his power in
his absence. Giulio's ambition was fixed upon the Papal crown. The
bastards he was rearing were but children. Florence had therefore to
be furnished with some political machinery that should work of itself.
The Cardinal did not wish to give freedom to the city, but clockwork.
He was in the perilous situation of having to rule a commonwealth
without life, without elasticity, without capacity of self-movement,
yet full of such material as, left alone, might ferment, and breed a
revolution. In this perplex