they commissioned Messer Agnolo (Acciaiuoli) to go to the Pope early in the morning, and to inform him he could go whither he pleased. The Pope and his suite waited for this announcement. When Messer Agnolo entered Sta. Maria Novella, Messer Francesco of Padua (Cardinal Condulmer, nephew of Eugenius) came to meet him outside the Pope’s chamber, and asked if they were prisoners. Messer Agnolo answered that, had they been prisoners, he would not have been charged with the commission, but another citizen who had voted in that sense. When the Pope heard it, he thanked him and the Signoria many times, instantly mounted and rode with his suite to Siena.’ In the Augustinian convent of Lecceto, before the Fontebrand, a gate of this city, where Eugenius IV. resided several months before returning to Rome, which had become more and more anarchical during his nine years’ absence, he granted the investiture of the kingdom of Sicily to Alfonso, on July 15,[94] and thus began the uninterrupted though often threatened reign of the Aragonese line, which lasted till the oft-revived question of the succession ended in the violent overthrow of the whole political system for which the Medici had laboured in a different way and in another sense. Sixteen years after the departure of Eugenius, another Pope came to Florence—another man, with other plans and thoughts. On April 25, 1459, Pius II. came hither from Siena on his way to the conference of princes assembled at Mantua to organise a crusade against the Turks. Florence was by no means well inclined towards her Sienese neighbours, and the last Neapolitan war, favoured by Siena, had not exactly improved the feeling. The Sienese priest, raised to the highest dignity of Christendom, and desirous of setting a limit to the threatening progress of Islam, was, however, most honourably received. Several princes and lords had repaired to the city before the Pope, to welcome him. Galeazzo Maria Visconti, son of the Duke of Milan, sixteen years old, appeared with a troop of 350 horse and Cosimo de’ Medici, although ill, could not be induced to neglect the duty of hospitality towards the son of his ally and friend; Sigismondo Malatesta, an Ordelaffi of Forli, a Pio of Carpi, one of the Feltrieri of Urbino, and others rode out with the young Sforza to San Casciano, where, eight miles from the city, the road descends into the valley of the Arno, and where the solemn reception took place. The Gonfaloniere, Agnolo Vettori, led Pius II. to Sta. Maria Novella, the usual residence of the Pope. The lover of learning and art delighted in the many beautiful things which the city, then exceedingly rich, offered to him; business, with the exception of a new election of bishops, does not seem to have been attended to. Cosimo de’ Medici was hindered from being present by indisposition which could not have been feigned.