On the other hand, I rejoice in your journey, which seems to me a piece of good fortune for many reasons. You will see many remarkable things, which will delight your mind, superior, I consider, to all, with one only exception. What promotes your interests can only be a pleasure to me.’[119] Lorenzo’s brother-in-law, Guglielmo de’ Pazzi, was his companion on this journey, which was connected with the marriage of Francesco Sforza’s daughter, who soon afterwards came through Tuscany on her wedding tour. Piero de’ Medici wrote repeatedly to his son during this journey,[120] showing the utmost solicitude for his welfare, as well as that he should make a good figure among these princes and noble ladies. He sent him plate for festivals which the young man might be called upon to give. ‘Do not care for expense,’ he says; ‘think only of doing honour to your family. Think of making yourself alive, and of showing that you are a man and not a boy, and that henceforward you are capable of managing greater things. This journey is to you the touchstone of your future career.’ More than once Piero expressed a wish that Lorenzo and his companion should return before the arrival of the Milanese princes. ‘It seems necessary to me that you should leave Milan before the bridal train; for the Princess is to inhabit our house, and if you and Guglielmo were absent, I should be like a man without hands.’ On the afternoon of June 22, Donna Ippolita entered Florence, and was lodged in the Medicean house. Beside Don Federigo, she was accompanied by her two brothers, Filippo and Sforza Maria; suite and escort numbered 1000 horses; and all were maintained at the public cost during the passage through Florentine territory, while the Duchess herself enjoyed the princely hospitality of the most distinguished family in the city.[121] At the beginning of March of the following year, Lorenzo went to Rome. Pope Pius II., in the midst of his preparations for the crusade, and in sight of the sea which was to bear his fleet and his allies to the Eastern coasts, had died at Ancona in the middle of August, 1464, a fortnight after Cosimo, and had been succeeded by the Venetian Pietro Barbo, under the name of Paul II. Pius’s death had put an end for the time to the crusade which he had been about to undertake with insufficient power. But the thought of it was kept alive, particularly in the Pontificate; and the progress of the Turks, who in Paul’s reign wrested the fortress of Negroponte from the Venetians, was so alarming that the preservation of peace in Italy, by which alone means of resistance could be hoped for, was most important for the Popes as well as the other rulers. In this respect Paul II. laboured in the most praiseworthy manner, at least during the first years of his reign, after he had disposed of the restless little dynasties in the neighbourhood of Rome.