gratitude for this; and, although the love we bore you seemed as if it could have been little, if at all, increased, we assure you that it has been augmented in such a manner that we shall ever be under obligation to you. We shall endeavour in time to prove our gratitude for the pleasure you have given us.’ Two months later Pietro Riario came to Florence. The ostensible aim of the journey was to take possession of the archbishopric, but it was more important to him and to the Pope to assure himself of the intentions of the Duke of Milan; in which he succeeded so well, that the story went that in Milan, where the Cardinal was in September, they had made an agreement about the royal title of Lombardy, to which the vain Sforza aspired, as the ambitious Visconti had done eighty years before. Pietro Riario’s presence in Florence was a new cause for festivals and expenses, at a time when the people were suffering from dearth. The eulogistic verses, exaggerated to the most excessive bombast and profanest idolatry, with which Angelo Poliziano (who was then certainly very young and very needy) celebrates the unworthy nephew of a pope, who was indulgent to culpable weakness towards his relations, are one of the numerous proofs which afford an insight into the public and moral conditions of the time. The early death of Pietro Riario, which happened in the beginning of 1474, put an end to various plans, and to a scandal which surpassed all that had been seen before. That there was no lack at the time of half ironical observations on the growing luxury in Florence, is shown by a letter addressed, on January 22 in the year just mentioned, to Duke Ercole d’Este by Niccolò Bendedei.[201] ‘There is nothing new here, except that in the neighbourhood of Pisa, where the illustrious Lorenzo is hawking with King Ferrante’s men, two of the ten falcons sent by His Majesty, and those the best, are lost. Your Excellence must not wonder that I speak of such things, for I only follow the example of others. Idleness has so gained the upper hand in Italy that, if nothing new happens, we shall have more to say about the slaughter of fowls and dogs than about armies and deeds of war. For the rest, I am of opinion that those who have to govern Italy in peace will not reap less fame than those who kept her at war. For the object of war is, after all, peace, and the only consideration is that it should be a permanent peace.’ But this never entered the minds of those who were all too ready to lavish the fruits of peace.