Under Lorenzo il Magnifico the Pazzi found themselves excluded from office, and their animosity was further aroused by the loss of a lawsuit involving the large fortune of Giovanni Borromeo, whose only daughter had married Giovanni de’ Pazzi, Andrea’s nephew. By Florentine law the daughter should have inherited from her father who died intestate, but it was assigned to her cousin, Carlo Borromeo. Guicciardini makes Pier Capponi say, “Tyrants are forced to watch the action of every one, and to cast down those who seem to them too powerful or too intelligent. Hence arose the wronging of the Pazzi, by an iniquitous law which deprived them of the inheritance of the Borromei, and the varied persecutions of the family, so that desperation drove them into that conspiracy whence came such infinite evils.” Francesco de’ Pazzi, Giovanni’s brother, described by Poliziano as “a man of blood who, when he meditated any design, went straight to his goal, being hindered by no regard for morality, religion, reputation, or fair fame,” quitted Florence and went to Rome, where the Pazzi had a banking house. He knew Sixtus IV. and was aware of his hatred of the Medici, a hatred he gratified by appointing Cardinal Francesco Salviati, a man of evil reputation and bitterly hostile to Lorenzo, to the See of Pisa. At Rome Francesco de’ Pazzi became intimate with the Pope’s so-called nephew, Count Girolamo Riario, Lord of Imola; and Stefano Infessura, the well-informed Roman diarist, affirms that “these things [_i. e._ the murder of the Medici] were ordered by Pope Sixtus, together with the Count Girolamo and others, in order to take away the dominion from Lorenzo and to confer it on the Count Girolamo.” The dying confession of one of their instruments, Giovanbattista di Montesecco, captain in the papal service, fully confirms this. [Illustration: COURTYARD OF PALAZZO PAZZI.]