Piero de’ Medici married Lucrezia, daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni, of a distinguished Florentine family, a woman of extraordinary endowments, who will be often mentioned in the course of this history. As Cosimo’s elder son, who was sickly from his earliest youth, seemed to be incapable of taking his eminent and arduous position in city and state, the father built all his hopes on the younger son. He lost him, however, at the age of twenty-two, in the beginning of November 1463, not a year after he had buried his little son Cosimo, whom Maria Ginevra degli Alessandri had borne to him, and the loss of whom is said to have broken his father’s heart. The old man wandered inconsolable through the rooms: ‘This is a large house,’ he lamented, ‘for so small a family.’ Among those who addressed expressions of sympathy to him was Pope Pius II. ‘Not the departed one is the loser,’ replied Cosimo; ‘for what we call life is death, and that beyond is the true life; but who needed him are the losers.’[96] Thus there only remained to him the family of Piero, who, besides his two sons, had two daughters, Bianca and Nannina, who, the eldest in her grandfather’s lifetime, married into two Florentine families, the Pazzi and Rucellai. Besides his legitimate children, Cosimo had a natural son, Carlo, probably by Maddalena, a Circassian whom Giovanni Portinari had bought at Venice in the summer of 1427.[97] He maintained great reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quarter of a century he was the almost absolute director of the State, but he never assumed the show of his dignity. Many works of art and _virtù_ were to be seen in his house; but in style of living, retinue and horses, he was modest. The ruler of the Florentine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and merchant. In his appearance and bearing there was nothing which distinguished him from others; he was simple, moderate, accessible, friendly and familiar with the common people. ‘He understood agriculture thoroughly,’ remarked Vespasiano da Bisticci, ‘and talked about it as if he had never occupied himself with other matters. He laid out the garden of the brethren of San Marco, which had been waste land, and created something really beautiful. Thus it was with his own possessions; he everywhere superintended the planting, grafted and pruned with his own hand. When residing at Careggi, on account of a pestilence, he dedicated the hours of the morning to two worthy employments. Hardly was he up than he went into the vineyard, where he worked for two hours, just as Pope Boniface IX. did in the Vigne at the palace of the Vatican. When he returned home he read the moral writings of Gregory the Great. In the midst of all his employments he remembered every single plantation on his estates, and when his peasants came to him he conversed with them about them.’