the advice of Michelozzi, the ruler of the city ordered that the weight resting on the arches of the columns should be diminished, that the courtyard be rebuilt from the arches upwards, and that windows of a modern order, like those he had designed for Cosimo in the courtyard of the Medici palace, should be made, and the walls ornamented _a sgraffio_, with the golden lilies which are still to be seen. All this Michelozzi did with extreme rapidity, fashioning circular windows, different from the others, above the windows of the second floor in the said courtyard, to give light to some rooms above, where now is the Hall of the Two Hundred. The third floor, where the Priors and the Gonfalonier lived, he made more ornate, and arranged rooms for the Priors on the side looking towards S. Piero Scheraggio; till then they had slept all together in one room. Eight rooms were made for the Priors, and a larger one for the Gonfalonier, all leading out of a passage with windows on the courtyard, and above these he made another set of convenient rooms for the servants of the palace ... also rooms for the office and house servants, trumpeters, pifferi, mace-bearers, and heralds, and various others necessary for such a palace. He also made a stone cornice surrounding the courtyard above the alur, and there he arranged a tank for rain water, in order to feed provisional fountains when needed. Michelozzi also adorned the chapel where mass was said, and made very rich ceilings, painted with golden lilies on an azure ground, to many rooms near it, and in those above and below in the palace he made new ceilings, covering all the old ones, which were according to ancient fashion.... Only one thing the genius of Michelozzi could not overcome, and that was the public staircase, which was badly designed, built in the wrong place and most inconvenient, being steep and dark, and made of wood from the first floor upwards. Still he worked to such purpose that at the entrance to the courtyard he made an approach of circular steps and a door with pilasters of stone, whose beautiful capitals he sculptured with his own hand, a cornice with double architraves of good design, and in the frieze were the various arms of the Commune. He also made stone stairs up to the floor where the Priors lived, and fortified them at the top and in the middle with portcullises in case of tumults: and at the top of the staircase he made a door which was called _la catena_, or ‘the barred,’ where one of the servants of the magistrates always stood to shut or to open it, according to the orders of the master. The tower, which had cracked owing to the weight of that part which rests obliquely, that is to say on the corbels overlooking the Piazza, he fortified with huge bands of iron. In short he improved and restored the palace in such a way that the whole city praised him, and in addition to other rewards he was appointed to be one of the ‘Collegio,’ magistrates