The endeavours of Vettori, who was attached to the Medici, to gain favour for his friend with Leo X., were long ineffectual; and Machiavelli showed symptoms of despair. [Sidenote: 1514. Ætat. 45.] "It seems," he writes, "that I am to continue in my hole, without finding a man who will remember my services, or believe that I can be good for any thing. It is impossible that I can remain long thus. I pine away; and see that, if God will not be more favourable to me, I shall be obliged to leave my home, and become secretary to some petty officer, if I can do nothing else; or exile myself into some desert to teach children to read. I shall feign that I am dead; and my family will get on much better without me; as I am the cause of expense--being accustomed to spend, and unable to do otherwise. I do not write this to induce you to take trouble for my sake; but to ease my mind, so as not to recur again to so odious a subject." Yet all his letters are not complaining. The spirit of "Belfegor" and "La Mandragola" animates many of them. "We are now grave," he writes, "and now frivolous; but we ought not to be blamed for this variety, as in it we imitate nature, which is full of change." [Sidenote: 1519. Ætat. 50.] The first use to which the Medici put him, was when Leo X. had placed the cardinal Julius over Florence, and washed to remodel the government. He addressed himself to Machiavelli for his advice; and the latter wrote, in reply, his "Essay on the Reform of the Government of Florence, Written at the request of Leo X." Soon after Leo died, and the cardinal Julius expected to have been elected pope. He was disappointed, and returned to Florence to confirm his authority. The death of Leo awakened the hopes of the opposite party; and a conspiracy was at this juncture entered into by the nephew of the gonfaloniere Soderini and the young philosophers of the Rucellai, to expel the Medici. It was discovered; two ringleaders were put to death, and the rest fled.