AT the death of Cosimo de’ Medici, his descendants, besides his natural son Carlo, who once more entered the ecclesiastical order, consisted of Piero, surnamed the Gouty (_il Gottoso_), and his four children. Piero was born in 1416, and was now forty-eight years old. He was a youth when the swift change of fortune in his father’s life took place, which, at first threatening his house with ruin, had suddenly raised it to supreme power, and his manhood passed during the envied but not seriously disputed exercise of that power. His health was feeble, yet this did not hinder him from undertaking various civil offices, and may, perhaps, have been of service to him by covering his mediocre character and intellect, and enabling him to preserve that middle course which is so difficult for the head of a party filled with great and ambitious men. He was a sensible, quiet man, experienced in business, with a sound judgment and far more kindliness of heart and sincerity than his father, but without his political acuteness, knowledge of men, and talent for steering safely among the numerous rocks that beset his position. A clever wife stood beside him. At a time when Florence had no lack of distinguished women, Lucrezia, the daughter of Francesco Tornabuoni, surpassed most in intellectual gifts and domestic virtues. Her family was a branch of an ancient and noble Florentine race, which, since the democratic reforms of 1293, had been excluded from holding civic offices, yet without losing importance. Like many others, Simon Tornaquinci, a hundred years later, had altered his coat-of-arms, enrolled himself among the plebeian families under the name of Tornabuoni, and attached himself to the Medicean party, in which his son Francesco took a not unimportant position. Tornaquinci and Tornabuoni possessed considerable landed property in the western part of Florence. A gate of the second wall, since called San Pancrazio, was once named after the former, and a street still bears the name of the latter.[103] Lucrezia de’ Medici never experienced the anguish of exile; neither, separated from an exiled husband, had she to remain at the head of a ruined household, like so many noble ladies in those days of magnificence so often changing into misery. She beheld three generations in the possession of power, with its charge of care and sorrow. While conducting her household, which never lost its simple character, she paid homage to the muse in lyric poems and translations of Biblical histories. We shall speak later of her intercourse with Luigi Pulci (whom she encouraged to complete his poem on the legends of Charlemagne), with Politian and others. Lucrezia possessed great influence over her eldest son, whose youth she guided, and she lived to enjoy the period of his highest greatness.