On the eighth of November, Don Piero de’ Medici reappeared in Florence. The City of Lilies knew that Don Paolo Orsini held the Porta di San Gallo for him, with troops disposed about the district; and suspected that he would summon her citizens and force himself upon them as Dictator. On the ninth, suspicion redoubled, because he went with an imposing retinue to the Palace of the Signoria where the magistrates were in conclave. The door was shut: a voice bade him enter by the postern, but alone. Don Piero de’ Medici turned away. A partisan of Medici in the Signoria followed him, and brought him back. In attempting the little gate, there was some scuffle, some dispute; and the gate was slammed upon him in a gathering crowd which cried “Away—away—and leave the Signoria in peace.” In a storm of hissing where stones were flying Don Piero de’ Medici flashed out his sword,—and—irresolutely—let it fall. His escort closed him in, and hurried him to old Cosmo’s palace, where all of the few Medici were arming. Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, not nineteen years of age, risked his sacred person—risked, because a Florentine mob had flung an archbishop in pontificals (Archbishop Salviati of Pisa) at a rope’s end from a window; and bleached with mortal terror the visage of a boy-cardinal (the Lord Rafaele Galeotto Sanzoni-Riario Cardinal-Deacon of San Giorgio _in Velum Aureum_, aet 16,) not sixteen years before,—his sacred person, because he who _suadente diabolo_ lifts hand against the person of one tonsured _ipso facto_ incurs the Greater Excommunication,—he risked his sacred person among a Florentine mob, endeavouring to rouse them as of old to follow Medici with the war-cry “Palle—Palle—Palle.”[29] All was in vain. The well-worn cry had lost magnetic virtue; and none in Florence now dared to own himself a friend of Medici. Don Piero rushed to the Porta di San Gallo, where Medici had never cried in vain. None answered him. His courage left him there. He infected with fear Don Paolo Orsini and his bands; and all fled to Bologna. At night Cardinal Giovanni and his sixteen-year-old cousin, Messer Giuliano Knight of St John of Jerusalem of Malta, escaped in the frocks of Friars Minor; and from Bologna these three Medici journeyed on to Venice where Italian exiles always found a home: while Florence sacked the Medici Palace, plundered the priceless Medici Library of Manuscripts, and set a price upon the head of Lorenzo’s son Don Piero.