Four days afterwards, at any rate, the Elector and his company are ready to start on their homeward journey; and the Pope, as a parting gift, presents them with wax candles blessed by his own holy fingers: "so that, accompanied by such holy things, they might reach their own country in safety without any ill encounters by the way." Thus, amid honours, pleasures, and the agreeable business arising out of her large share in the administion of Papal favour, passed four brilliant years of the heyday prime of Catherine's life. Was there no darker woof to chequer the bright web—no shading to so much sunlight? That terrible death-bed scene, when Girolamo's cousin, Antonio Bassi, lay a-dying, has led us already to the mention of the dark story of the Pazzi murders. This celebrated episode of Florentine history, which has been made again and again the novelist's and poet's as well as the historian's subject, is too well known for it to be necessary to do more here than briefly recapitulate the familiar facts, especially as the present story is only concerned with the question, how far the Riarii were implicated in them. [Sidenote: THE PAZZI CONSPIRACY.] On Easter day, the 26th of April, 1478, Lorenzo de Medici, afterwards "the Magnificent," and his brother Giuliano were, while at worship before the high altar of the Cathedral, stabbed by the daggers of assassins—Lorenzo inefficiently, Giuliano mortally. Francesco de Pazzi and his adherents were the murderers. A Salviati, Archbishop of Pisa, was also one of the conspirators, to whom had been assigned the part of seizing the Palazzo Pubblico while the others did the murder. The daggers of the assassins, however, having done only half their work, and the populace of Florence showing themselves in no wise inclined to rise against the Medici, or make any demonstration in favour of the conspirators, the game was lost. Francesco and the numerous family of the Pazzi were almost wholly exterminated; and the stout republicans of Florence, having no fear of the Church before their eyes, hung the Archbishop Salviati out of a window of the Palazzo Pubblico in a very summary manner.