The old man of seventy-seven years once more journeyed across the plains of Lombardy, ascended the Apennines, passed through Florence,[280] and began his lectures with the 'Tusculans' of Cicero, on the twelfth day of January, 1475, in Rome. The marks of favour with which Sixtus had received him were highly honourable. Filelfo was permitted to sit in the Pope's presence, and on Christmas Day he stood among the ambassadors while Sixtus celebrated mass. The vigorous old scholar at first felt that all his previous life had been a tedious prologue to this blissful play. Soon, however, a cloud arose on the horizon. The Pope's treasurer, Milliardo Cicala, was remiss in payments. Filelfo retaliated by describing Cicala's vices in the most lurid colours to Sixtus.[281] Though his style and eloquence were always vulgar, the concentrated fury and impassioned hatred of these invectives cannot fail to impress the imagination. Such a picture of the dissolute and grasping treasurer, painted by Filelfo and sent to Sixtus, has a sinister humour which might recommend itself to the audience of an infernal comedy. It is only necessary to have some knowledge of the three men in order to perceive its force. Nor did Sixtus himself long continue in Filelfo's graces. Frequent journeys prove how unsettled he became; at last he left Rome in 1476, never to return. When the Pazzi Conjuration failed at Florence, Filelfo wrote to congratulate Lorenzo de' Medici on his escape, and undertook the task of composing a history of the whole intrigue. Two long and violent letters addressed to Sixtus, accusing him of participation in the conspiracy, and heaping on him charges of vice, were the result of this determination.[282] These epistles were dated from Milan, whither Filelfo had retired in 1476, to find his third wife dead of the plague, and buried on the eve of his arrival. His sorrow on this occasion was genuine; nor is it likely that he derived much comfort from a curious epistle addressed to him by Paolo Morosini, who, himself a husband and father, attempted to console the septuagenarian professor by elaborate abuse of matrimony.[283] To such ridiculous vagaries did the rhetorical spirit of humanism lead its votaries. [Footnote 280: He had long since made peace with the Medici.] [Footnote 281: See the original letters in Rosmini, vol. ii. pp. 411-419.] [Footnote 282: Rosmini, vol. ii. p. 261, note.] [Footnote 283: _Ib._ p. 248.]