He was a grave man, temperate in all enjoyments. Players, rioters, and jugglers found as little favour with him as those who displayed a luxury unsuited to their position. This, however, did not prevent him from granting free course at the banquets of the learned men who were about him, members of the Platonic Academy and others, to the hilarity and wit which the Florentines of that period were apt to flavour with licence as well as with Attic salt. Of games he indulged in chess only, and this rarely, and not till after dinner. In his latter years he was very silent, and remained several hours without speaking. When his wife asked him the reason one day, he replied,’When you remove to your villa, you consider for a fortnight what you have to see about. Do you think I have not much to think of when about to exchange this life for another?’ In his speech he was witty, but cautious, and it was said of him that he liked to give ambiguous answers. He shrank from boasting, and said that there was a weed called envy, which must not be watered, but left to wither. But when he chose he could give sharp answers. When Rinaldo degli Albizzi, at the time of Visconti’s warlike preparations, on which the exile fixed his hopes, said to him that the hen was brooding, he answered, ‘It is difficult to brood outside the nest.’ And on the warning of other exiles, that he ought to take care, for they were awake, he replied that he believed it, for he must have banished sleep from them. His remarks were always to the purpose. When Pius II. was arming for the crusade, he said the Pope was an old man, and was attempting a youthful feat. He reproved many without using a hard expression. His counsels in political and personal affairs were always moderate and prudent. When one of his partisans, a man of small capabilities, was going to a foreign town as Podestà, and asked him for advice, he only answered: ‘Dress according to your position, and speak little.’ In this way he maintained his position and that of the State for so many years in the midst of difficult circumstances. As has been already said, there was something cynical in him. Nothing characterises him so much as the words which he once addressed to an influential man, who, differing in opinion, quarrelled with him, and complained of Cosimo’s being in his way. ‘You,’ he said, ‘pursue the infinite; I the finite. You plant your ladder in the air; I on the ground, in order not to fall instead of flying. If I am anxious for the honour and advantage of my house, if I wish that it may retain pre-eminence over yours, there is nothing in that which is not honourable and just, and no one will blame me because I prefer my interests to yours. You and I are like two great dogs, who spring upon one another, but then pause and sniff. As they both have teeth, each goes his own way. I advise you to look after your business; I will attend to mine.’