But not long could the banished brothers remain at Careggi. "Two thousand crowns of gold to him who will bring to the Signory at Florence the head of either of the outlawed Medici; five thousand crowns to him who will deliver to the Signory the bodies of these pestilent rebels alive." Thus read the cruel ban of their native city and, first, Pietro, and next, Giovanni, turned from the familiar scenes of their loved country-house and fled in great secrecy toward Bologna. But the hunters were after them, and for two anxious weeks this young Giovanni, a cardinal of Rome and a prince of Holy Church, whose boyish days had been filled with pleasure and brightness, whose slightest wish had ever been gratified, remained concealed, in the deepest recesses of the Apennines, a rebel and an outlaw, with a price upon his head. Eighteen years passed away, and on the morning of the fourteenth of September, 1512, two full-robed priests, surrounded by a great escort of glittering lances and a retinue of heavy-armed foot-soldiers, entered the gate-way of the "Beautiful City." They were the Cardinal de Medici and his faithful cousin returning to their native city, proudly and triumphantly, after eighteen years of exile. Boys no longer, but grave and stalwart men, Giovanni and Giulio rode through the familiar streets and past the old landmarks that they had never forgotten, to where, at the foot of the Via Larga, still stood the palace of the Medici. Since the year 1504, when the unfortunate Messer Pietro--unfortunate to the last--had been drowned on the disastrous retreat from Garigliano, the Cardinal Giovanni had stood as the head of the house of Medici. High in favor with the stern old Pope Julius II., he had, after six years of wandering and anxiety, risen to eminence and power at Rome. In all these eighteen years, he never gave up his hope of regaining his native city. Three times did the Medici seek to return to power; three times were they repulsed. At last, his time has come. Florence, torn by feud and discontent, with a Spanish army camped beyond her walls, opens her gates to the conquerors, and the Cardinal Giovanni rules as Lord of Florence. So the fair city again lost her liberties; so the exiled family returned to position and power; so the fickle Florentines, who, in a fury of patriotism, had sacked the palace of Lorenzo, now shouted themselves hoarse for "_Palle_ and the Medici!" And within less than six months comes a still higher triumph. Pope Julius II. is dead, and, by the unanimous voice of the "College of Cardinals," Giovanni, Cardinal de Medici, ascends the papal throne, on the third of March, 1513, as Pope Leo the Tenth.