the Signori during their meals, and to compose eulogies or satires on public occasions, wrote the doggerel verses which indicated the character and crime of each. The painter obtained from his pictures the name of Andrea degli Impiccati.[81] Rinaldo degli Albizzi resigned himself to his fate. Francesco Filelfo, the humanist, whom hatred against Cosimo de’ Medici united to him, informed him from Milan that nothing was to be hoped for from thence. It was probably shortly after the lost battle that he made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in fulfilment of an old vow. Returned from thence, he stayed at Ancona, where he died, an aged man, on February 2, 1442, on the marriage-day of a daughter.[82] Seven years later, Ormanno, then more than fifty years old, turned to Cosimo’s younger son, Giovanni, to beg him to obtain a favour in family affairs.[83] The letters from Mantua, where the Albizzi resided with the Margrave Ludovico Gonzaga, have the tone of old friendly connections; but how painfully clear is the fallen condition of the once rich and powerful family! How terrible it was we perceive from the narrative of a simple and trustworthy man, a friend and client of the Medici.[84] Messer Rinaldo’s younger son Maso, married to a Gianfigliazzi, saw himself involved with his family in his father’s misfortunes. He had a son, also called Rinaldo, who, in order to earn a livelihood, entered the service of Antonio Cicinello, the influential councillor of King Alfonso of Aragon, and attained his confidence and affection in a high degree. When Rinaldo was going to Ancona one day to visit his mother, who lived there, he was plundered on the way, and appeared in the doublet of a wretch whom he had seen hanging by the wayside on a tree. The young man died not long after, and Cicinello sent the unhappy woman, who had lost her husband also, and lived in extreme want at Ancona, a sum which he had been able to obtain from the property of the deceased, and which was part of what he had helped her son to gain. When the widow returned to Florence some time afterwards, Cicinello repaired thither on affairs of state, and took with him the remainder of the money. We will let our authority speak for himself: ‘One morning Messer Antonio repaired to Sta. Trinità, and sent to the widow of Maso degli Albizzi (whose parental house joined the church) with the request to come to him, as he wished to speak with her. But the poor woman lay ill in bed, so that Messer Antonio sent her the thirty ducats which he had by him, with the words, he had once procured this money for her son, and now wished that it should be of use to her. When the poor woman received the money, and remembered the kindness which the sender of this money had shown her son, she said, weeping, ‘It is now nearly thirty-five years since my husband was banished from Florence. I have wandered miserably about many parts of Italy, and during my husband’s lifetime, as afterwards