It requires no great stretch of the imagination to picture the morals and the manners of society in Tuscany during the last half of the sixteenth century. The superabundance of private riches and the enervation of idle leisure destroyed the framework of domestic economy; "_Di fare il Signore_!"--to play the gentleman--was the current mode. Everyone strove to surpass his neighbours in luxury and extravagance. The example of the Court was felt in every grade of life: marital unfaithfulness, personal spleen, and family feuds divided every household. The worst of human passions ran riot, and life became a pandemonium, wherein the sharp poignard, the poison phial, and the strangling rope, played their part at the dastardly will of their owners. Fair Florence was still--as she will ever be--"The City of the Lily"; but the blue and silver emblematic _giglio_--the modestly unfolding fragrant iris of the unsophisticated countryside, drooped before the flaming, passionate tiger-lily of the formal garden of debauchery, with its pungent odour and its secretive, incurled scarlet petals--splashed with the blacks and yellows of crime and greed! "Nature ever Finding discordant fortune, like all seed Out of its proper climate, thrives but ill: But were the world content to work, And work on the foundation Nature lays, It would not lack of excellence." ... IL PARADISO, _Canto viii_. A SHORT BIBLIOGRAPHY _Anecdota Letteraria_. 4 vols. Florence. 1773. Bocchi, F., _Le Bellezze della Citta di Firenze_. Florence. 1591. Corsini, B., _Lorenzino de' Medici_. Florence. 1890. Cronacci, F., _Lorenzo de' Medici_. Florence. 1760. Dumas, A., _Une Année a Florence_. 2 vols. Paris. 1841. Dumas, A., _Les Galeries de Florence_. Paris. 1842. Fabroni, A., _Vie de Laurent de Medicis_. Paris. 1791. Ferrai, L.A., _Lorenzino de' Medici_. Florence. 1891. Ferruccio, M., _Lorenzino de' Medici_. Florence. 1890. Galetti, P. _Poësie di Don Francisco de' Medici e Bianca Cappello_. Florence. 1894. Guerrazzi, F.D., _Isabella d'Orsini_. Florence. 1847. Hyett, F.A., _Florence: Her History and Art_. London. 1903. Landucci, L., _Diario Fiorentino_--1400-1526. Florence. 1883. Lêcluse, E.J. de, _Florence et ses Vicissitudes_. Paris. 1837. Levantini, P.G., _Lucrezia de' Tornabuoni_. Florence. 1888. Litta, P., _Famiglie Cêlêbri Italiani_. 11 vols. Milan. 1819. Macchiavelli, N., _Le Istorie Fiorentine_. Florence. 1888. Müntz, E., _Florence et La Toscane_. Paris. 1901. Napier, H.E., _Florentine History_. 6 vols. London. 1846. Nestor, J., _Histoire des Homme Célèbre de la Maison de Medicis_. Paris. 1564. Odorici, P., _Bianca Cappello_. Florence. 1860. Perrens, F.T., _La Civilisation Florentine_. Paris. 1893. Do. _Histoire de Florence_. 6 vols. Paris. 1877. Do. _Histoire de Florence_--1434-1531. 3 vols. Paris. 1888. Rastrelli, M., _Storia di Alessandro de' Medici_. 2 vols. Florence. 1781.