At last matters came to an open breach. On May 6, 1479, Poliziano wrote to Lorenzo from Careggi: ‘I am here at Careggi, having left Caffaggiuolo by command of Madonna Clarice. The grounds of my departure, I desire, aye I earnestly entreat, to be allowed to explain to you by word of mouth, for it is a prolix affair. I believe that, when you have heard me, you will find that the wrong is not all on my side. For decency’s sake, and in order not to go to Florence without your orders, I came here, and am waiting till your Magnificence informs me what I am to do. For I am yours, though the world itself should turn upside down; and if fortune will not smile upon me in your service, that will not prevent me from always faithfully devoting myself to that service. I commend myself to your Magnificence, and am entirely at your commands.’ What had moved Madonna Clarice to this strong measure is clear. She could have nothing to say against the scholar; but the man inspired her with very little confidence, although we cannot think that she was influenced by the evil rumours which were afterwards spread as to Poliziano’s moral conduct—rumours characteristic of a time that delighted in the most dishonouring accusations. Men of letters were so full of exaggerated self-importance, and so incapable of controlling their tongues or their pens, that Lorenzo’s wife probably had right on her side. She wanted to superintend her children’s education; the tutor would not suffer it. ‘As for Giovanni,’ wrote he to Lorenzo from Caffaggiuolo on April 6, when he enclosed a letter from Piero, ‘his mother makes him read in the Psalter, which I cannot at all approve. When she does not interfere with him his progress is surprising, so that he can read without any help.’ To give the Psalter to a child of three as a reading-book is certainly a strange proceeding. But if, as we must suppose, it was the translation made for Clarice by Marsilio Ficino, the scholar of the fifteenth century could not make the same objection which was made in the next by another scholar, who received the cardinalate—Pietro Bembo—to the reading of St. Paul’s Epistles: that they spoilt one’s style.