CHAPTER I.

PIERO DE’ MEDICI, HIS FAMILY AND FRIENDS. AT the death of Cosimo de’ Medici, his descendants, besides his natural son Carlo, who once more entered the ecclesiastical order, consisted of Piero, surnamed the Gouty (_il Gottoso_), and his four children. Piero was born in 1416, and was now forty-eight years old. He was a youth when the swift change of fortune in his father’s life took place, which, at first threatening his house with ruin, had suddenly raised it to supreme power, and his manhood passed during the envie…