and turn him
loose at Montepulciano. The farm is large, the mule is small, so no harm
can come of it. Tell your mother, with my love, not to be nervous. I
shall surely be home before any trouble comes. Give a kiss to Baccina,
Piero, and Totto: I wish I knew his eyes were getting well. Be happy and
spend as little as you may. Christ have you in his keeping.'--There is
nothing exquisite or divinely delicate in this letter, but there are
many such, and they were not written by a bad man, any more than the
answers they evoke were addressed to one. There is little more save of a
like character that is known of Machiavelli the man. But to judge him
and his work we must have some knowledge of the world in which he was to
move and have his being.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: State of Italy.]

At the beginning of the sixteenth century Italy was rotten to the core.
In the close competition of great wickedness the Vicar of Christ easily
carried off the palm, and the Court of Alexander VI. was probably the
wickedest meeting-place of men that has ever existed upon earth. No
virtue, Christian or Pagan, was there to be found; little art that was
not sensuous or sensual. It seemed as if Bacchus and Venus and Priapus
had come to their own again, and yet Rome had not ceased to call herself
Christian.

[Sidenote: Superstition.]

'Owing to the evil ensample of the Papal Court,' writes Machiavelli,
'Italy has lost all piety and all religion: whence follow infinite
troubles and disorders; for as religion implies all good, so its absence
implies the contrary. To the Church and priests of Rome we owe another
even greater disaster which is the cause of her ruin. I mean that the
Church has maintained, and still maintains Italy divided.' The Papacy is
too weak to unite and rule, but strong enough to prevent others doing
so, and is always ready to call in the foreigner to crush all Italians
to the foreigner's profit, and Guicciardini, a high Papal officer,
commenting on this, adds, 'It would be impossible to speak so ill of the
Roman Court, but that more abuse should not be merited, seeing it is an
infamy, and example of all the shames and scandals of the world.' The
lesser clergy, the monks, the nuns followed, with anxious fidelity, the
footsteps of their shepherds. There was hardly a tonsure in Italy which
covered more than thoughts and hopes of lust and avarice. Religion and
morals which God had joined together, w