Lorenzo’s desire was fulfilled. On July 4, he received from Rome the news that the Pope had determined to entrust Franceschetto with a mission to Perugia, and to leave his wife in Florence for a time. It may easily be imagined how pleasing this last arrangement was to Lorenzo; the former seemed rather questionable to the experienced politician. ‘This Perugian affair,’ he wrote at once to Lanfredini,[339] ‘seems to me very grave, and such as may create embarrassment; all the more so as Signor Francesco has had no practice in such things, and has no one near him to whom anything important can be entrusted.’ Then, after relating how he dined the day before with his son-in-law at Careggi, and they had visited the Petraja and other places, which he had much liked, he continues: ‘Maddalena will remain here, to which Signor Francesco seems quite agreed. Clarice could not be worse than she is now, and I fear we shall soon lose her. You can imagine what comfort she finds in the presence of her daughter, who has always seemed to me to be the apple of her eye (_l’occhio del capo suo_); so we are both very grateful to his Holiness. Of myself I say nothing, for you know how I love my children, especially in the present case.’ On July 6, Franceschetto Cybò left Florence. His experiences at Perugia will be mentioned hereafter. Lorenzo, though much in need of the baths, was detained in the city by the weak state of Clarice and the pressure of business. At last, on the morning of July 21, he set out for Filetta in the Merse Vale in the Sienese territory. It is a small village consisting of only a few houses, in a valley surrounded with woods; the waters of the neighbouring sulphur-springs of Macereto have been brought thither, and it lies lonely and deserted on the road leading from Siena to Grosseto and the Maremma. In the summer of 1813 Emperor Henry of Luxemburg was carried thither, with the hand of death upon him; in 1459 Pope Pius II., who repeatedly visited the waters of his native land, sought relief from his inveterate enemy the gout in these springs. Scarcely had Lorenzo arrived at Filetta when the fatal news reached him—Clarice died on the afternoon of July 30. The day before, Ser Piero had written to Lanfredini:[340] ‘I know not what to tell you of Madonna Clarice; she gets better for a day or two, and then gets worse again, so that she is slowly approaching dissolution.’ The dissolution came much quicker than was expected, yet it hardly looks well that Lorenzo should leave the city when her state was so critical, and that he did not return on hearing that she was worse. ‘If you should hear Lorenzo blamed for not being present at his wife’s death,’ wrote Ser Piero to Lanfredini on July 31, ‘excuse him. Leoni (the physician) considered it necessary for his health for him to go to the baths, and no one thought death was so near.’ The Ferrarese ambassador confirms the statement that, according to the doctors’ advice,