Palle! Palle! Palle! The chant rang up from the streets below.
Balls! Balls! Balls! It was the chant that had greeted Lorenzo de’ Medici for over twenty-three years as the Florentine head of state. It was the same chant that had echoed in the ears of his father and his grandfather before him.
Balls! Balls! Balls! heralding his victories; Balls! Balls! Balls! rallying in support of his policies when they were not so successful. Even when his actions were downright foolish and their consequences disastrous, there was no shortage of enthusiastic supporters, ever ready with their lusty cry of Balls! Balls! Balls! When enthusiasm was wanting, or support difficult to come by, it was simply purchased outright, so that the steady, pounding, intimidating cadence of Balls! Balls! Balls! was always there to drown out the objections and remonstrance’s of his enemies.
How the balls came to represent the Medici family is a story shrouded in the mists of the Dark Ages. It involves a knight errant named Averardo, attached to the court of Charlemagne, and a wicked giant who was terrorizing the countryside around Florence. A ferocious battle ensued between these two, and notwithstanding the giant’s diabolical fury and superior strength, Averardo prevailed. During the fight, his shield had absorbed blow after vicious blow from the giant’s iron-studded club. The dents on that shield came to be represented as red balls on a field of gold.
In recognition of the undying gratitude of the people, Averardo cheerfully agreed to remain with them always and to protect them against the depredations of future giants lurking in the neighborhood, intent on terror and exploitation. And so the brave knight settled in the district known as the Mugello and sired the noble race that would someday be known as the Medici and that would adopt as their insignia the famous red balls.
Such at least was the account pieced together by an historian “of considerable accomplishment,” hired by the Medici, using, as he claimed, both Latin and French sources of great antiquity. The degree to which his scholarship was colored by a desire to please his patrons can only be guessed.
Those disinclined to credit tales of giants and savage blows heroically incurred offered explanations of their own: It was said that the balls were originally pills, and that the Medici, as their name implies, were the descendants of medical doctors. It was maintained in other quarters, less friendly to Medici interests, that the balls were nothing but coins, the age-old emblem of pawnbrokers and usurers.
Further complicating the matter of the balls was the problem of their exact number. Originally thought to be twelve, we nevertheless find the Medici emblem here with ten, there with seven. Tombs and some buildings sport five balls, but others have six. This confusion in time gave rise to the unkind observation that the Medici didn’t know how many balls they had. In a language where courage is measured out in balls, so that the phrase, “He has seven balls,” accompanied by appropriate gestures, is meant to convey that he has three and a half times the courage normally allotted to one man, in such a language, this uncertainty about the number of one’s balls is no laughing matter.
Balls! Balls! Balls! the chant below continued, and Lorenzo smiled as much as a man in his condition could. The gout had swollen his feet and ankles to grotesque dimensions and turned the skin on them purple and shiny. He had not walked or put on shoes in over two months. The pain had crept up his legs, joint by joint, to his hips, his elbows, his shoulders, even down to his fingertips.
The fever had been raging in him constantly for over a week and showed no sign of breaking. It was consuming him, growing in strength as he weakened. He felt it in his blood and his veins, in his bones and his guts. Poking and palpitating doctors had assured him that his liver was hideously swollen. His nerves were shattered. His strength had deserted him almost completely, so that he could no longer even hold a pen to write. His eyes were failing. At the age of only forty-three, the man who had so often celebrated the glories of youth in his poetry was dying.
For this particular appearance, he had been propped up and tied into a straight-back chair and carried to a window where he was exhibited to the people. He was not an imposing sight, but the distance at which the crowd was held would protect him from careful scrutiny. He was dressed in the simple lucco, the citizen’s gown worn by the sober and respectable men of Florence. It was a generous garment that could easily conceal the unkindnesses of nature and age. It gave little or no clue that what had once been firm had turned flaccid or that what was then full and robust was now shrunken and shriveled. Wrapped in the ample scarlet cloth, the evidence of his wasting illness would remain hidden from the world—the emaciated arms and legs, the sagging belly, the sunken chest.
He had been shaved and heavily made up for the occasion, mostly to cover the deep, dark circles under his eyes. They had considered washing his hair, which now hung in thick, oily black clumps, but the risk of the cold to his frail hold on life had outweighed cosmetic considerations. Instead, he was saddled with a hat.
His appearance at the balcony was brief. No speech was required of him. An announcement was made dismissing the rumors of his ill health as a cold complicated by nothing more than a case of laryngitis. To the chant of Balls! Balls! Balls! it was further explained that a curative visit to the baths at Vigone had been arranged, and that the great man’s departure was imminent.
Presently, Lorenzo was bundled back into the room, strapped to a litter, and carried to the courtyard where a carriage waited. Was it his imagination, or was the crowd smaller? Were their lusty shouts of Balls! Balls! Balls! a little less lusty? Where was the roar, the staccato rhythm, the fists jabbing in the air to punctuate their chant? Were even they turning away from him now? Would they abandon him in his final hours? Had the friar gotten to them? The pain was too intense for Lorenzo to think clearly about all this now. Secured in his carriage and overcome with exhaustion, he drifted off into an uneasy sleep. It was in this pitiful condition, assailed by doubts and surrounded by sycophants and hangers-on, that Lorenzo de’ Medici, called Lorenzo the Magnificent, left Florence in early March 1492. He would never return.
Lorenzo’s father, whose chronic afflictions had earned him the ignominious nickname of Piero the Gouty, had died at forty-eight. This painful disease, engendered by indulgence and excess, was Lorenzo’s birthright, then. Unable to flex his thin, arthritic fingers, he thought back to how these same fingers could once dance across the strings of a lyre or trace the most delicate and elegant characters that a pen was capable of committing to paper. His now bloated and useless feet had once carried him swiftly and surely across the football field in his youth, and the dance floor as he grew older. They had carried him and many a conquest to the bedroom as well. He had lived well, if not temperately, and the memory of it soothed him now in his agony.
With a sigh, he temporarily lost himself in the past, in the litany of his accomplishments, from the encouragement of learning and scholarship to the sponsorship of painters, sculptors, poets, and musicians. He had designed buildings and had them built. He had assembled the most complete library of classical books and manuscripts in existence. He had made Florence respected everywhere in the world for her brilliance and her preeminence in the cultural sphere.
He had been a good father to his children and affectionate with his wife, a dull matron, a dour Roman, but his wife nonetheless. He had tried to be friendly and helpful to everyone. He loved animals, he bred racehorses, milk cows, pheasants, pigs, and rabbits. He had been a keeper of bees, a cultivator of gardens, and a maker of cheeses. He had done, by his own evaluation, virtually everything fine and praiseworthy that was worth doing in the world.
So what did this friar want of him? Why had he taken the pulpit and denounced him so vociferously? Pursued him with all the fury of a hellhound unleashed? Why was he tormenting him, turning the people against him? Lorenzo did not understand.
For a month he languished, not so much struggling against the disease as surrendering to it and, perhaps because of that surrender, being occasionally granted a
day of remission. One such day, a bright day in early April, found Lorenzo in good spirits and even up to talking with the serving woman who had come to change his bedclothes. Deeming her intellect too dull and full of dross to engage in a discussion of the beautiful frescos that lined the walls of the villa, he was telling her about something more suited to her station and limited imagination—the collection of exotic animals that he kept at Poggio a Caiano.
“Imagine an enormous horse, covered with brown and yellow spots,” Lorenzo began.
“Sounds like your horse has the plague or a touch of the malaria to me,” the maid responded skeptically.
“Now imagine that his neck is so long, he can easily peer over the city walls of Florence! That’s what my giraffe is like.”
“Che diavolo d’animale,” she exclaimed, making the sign of the cross. “God protect us from such monsters! And where did you get such a beast as that?” she asked warily.
“It was a present from my friend, the Sultan of Babylon,” he said.
“Babylon, indeed,” she snorted. “There’s nothing ever come out of Babylon but sin and destruction and whores!” Secure in her biblical knowledge of that city, she considered the matter of the giraffe’s demonic origins irrefutably settled.
“Of course, good woman, I have other animals too. Bears! Tigers! Bulls from Spain! Boars! Buffalo! What would you like?”
“Have you got any lions about?”
“Why yes, of course. Why do you ask?”
“It seems the city will be needing lions.”
“How so?” Lorenzo was aware of the two lions, proudly exhibited in a cage in the appropriately named Via del Leone—Lion Street. He had, in fact, donated them to the city. As official lions of the commune, they were occasionally used in public spectacles. Once, at Lorenzo’s instigation, the Piazza della Signoria had been turned into a giant hunting field, and wild animals of every description were set loose and hunted down there by dashing young men. It was a stirring entertainment. The climax of the spectacle was to be a battle between the lions and a pack of wild dogs. But both dogs and lions were leery of the engagement and scrupulously avoided one another. After much futile coaxing and goading, the idea was abandoned and the entertainment declared a failure. But the lions had been majestic in appearance that day. Frightening! Regal! The embodiment of nobility itself!
“I said, they’re dead,” she enunciated firmly, drawing Lorenzo out of his reverie.
“What? Dead? How?” what little color he had left his face.
“They killed each other in their cage. In a fight, tore each other apart,” she said.
“My God,” gasped Lorenzo. “It’s a sign!”
“They say, it’s a sign of death,” she confirmed.
“Whose death?”
“Why, the lion being the king of beasts, they say it must be a sign of the king’s death.” Her logic was surprisingly sound for one of so little formal education.
This last, terrifying, inevitable conclusion had already forced itself upon Lorenzo. The death of the king was being presaged. But Florence had no king. Florence was a republic. Florence was ruled by the people. Except . . .
Except that the friar had called him, Lorenzo, a king in everything but name. Except that the friar had denounced him, Lorenzo, from the pulpit in the cathedral. Hair shaking in great waves as he preached, arms upraised, he had spoken bitterly to the people of Florence: “You have sold your ancient birthright, your cherished liberty! And what have you gotten in return? What bargain have you struck with your precious liberty in the balance? You have bartered it away, squandered it for lewd entertainments, squandered it for bread and circuses, squandered it for spectacles staged for you by a tyrant!” Yes, the friar had denounced him, Lorenzo, as a king, a usurper, and a tyrant.
“That’s not the only sign. They say there’ve been others,” the old servant was going on. “She-wolves howling. They say you can hear them in the hills, and there are lights in the sky at night . . .”
“Stop it! That’s enough! What are you trying to do? Frighten him to death?” A handsome, effeminate man of about forty had entered the room. “Madame, you are dismissed!”
Terror had drawn Lorenzo up into a sitting position, and his bony fingers were constricted around the fur-lined edge of his satin coverlet. He was bathed in an acrid, sour-smelling sweat. The new arrival and his dearest friend, Angelo Poliziano, hastened to his side.
The solicitous Poliziano lowered Lorenzo the Magnificent back into the nest of pillows upon which he rested. He gently pried open the quaking, skeletal fists and tucked them safely back under the covers. His movements were busy, fussy even. He made cooing, comforting sounds as he hovered over his master. “Tales, fantastications, inventions. They’re just tales told by old women—and old men. It’s nonsense, all nonsense. Don’t listen to a word.”
“Angelo, Angelo, where have you been? What have you been up to?” croaked the dying man in a rasping voice.
“Putting my faith in science and not in the rantings of superstitious old fools. I’ve sent for help. Look here. Avanti, Signori!” He summoned two gentlemen who were waiting respectfully just outside the door. As they approached, Lorenzo recognized Piero Leoni, his personal physician, in the company of a bespectacled stranger.
“Dottor Lazaro di Pavia, physician attached to the court of Lodovico il Moro in Milan,” Angelo made the introduction. “They say he has performed wonders.”
The new physician pointed his pinched face in Lorenzo’s direction and nodded curtly.
“Well, begin your examination,” Angelo invited. Lorenzo smiled weakly. The doctor dropped a large and heavy-looking cloth bag. It clanged to the stone floor as if it were full of mason’s tools instead of the delicate instruments of surgery. He approached his prostrate subject. He peered into orifices; he lifted the covers; he poked, nodding gravely the entire time. He requested a stool sample, and Angelo informed him that there had been none for over a fortnight. The jealous Dottor Leoni eyed his rival with suspicion.
His examination complete, the new doctor proceeded to cross the room to an alcove where there was a heavy oak table. He heaved the bag up onto the table and sent its contents clamoring unceremoniously out. Angelo hurried to his side, followed by Lorenzo’s physician, Piero. “Well?” he demanded, “Can you do anything for him?”
“Of course I can do something for him,” he said abruptly as if there were never any doubt. “However, his condition is well advanced. I should have been called in earlier.” Turning to Leoni, he said haughtily, “And what treatment, dear doctor, have you been prescribing for your patient?”
Dottor Leoni replied rather pompously and defensively, “Being a physician and not a student of witchcraft, I have avoided the potions and concoctions often favored by ‘certain members’”—he spoke with disdain—“of our profession. I have ordered him to be kept warm and dry, to be kept out of the night air so that his system might purge itself. I have further specified that he refrain from the eating of pears and that he take care to swallow no grape pips . . .”
“Grape pips!” sputtered the Milanese physician. And, as competitive medical men are wont to do, they fell to squabbling, then hurling accusations. The offended Dottor Leoni, after a great show of indignation and with much huffing and puffing, finally left the room.
With a pleased smile, the conquering physician turned to Angelo, “Now that we’ve rid ourselves of that fool, shall we begin?” He reached deep into the recesses of his black physician’s gown and extracted a tiny velvet pouch. Untying the string, he shook a handful of large, milky-white pearls out into a cup. Angelo watched in amazement as he transferred the contents of the cup to a heavy marble mortar and, with a pestle of similar material, began to crush the soft, beautiful stones. He ground them to a fine powder. He repeated this procedure with a variety of precious stones, using a heavier, iron-tipped pestle and more violent blows as the obduracy of his ingredients increased. The sound of iron and stone hammering on stone filled
the air and rang from the walls.
Angelo felt more as if he were in a quarry than in a sickroom. He grew perplexed and increasingly skeptical as he watched this madman pounding furiously, smashing precious stones to powder with diabolical glee. He was also concerned that the racket might disturb his master and shatter the fitful sleep into which he had fallen with the help of a bountiful tranquilizing draft.
“Are you there, Angelo?” Lorenzo’s faint voice drifted over to the breaker’s yard where the good doctor was noisily at work. Instantly, Angelo was at his side. “What is he doing over there, the noise?” he said weakly.
Angelo explained the physician’s bizarre procedures and his exotic remedies. A ray of hope crossed Lorenzo’s face. He took Angelo’s hands into his own and questioned him eagerly. He squeezed hard in his excitement. “It’s going to work, isn’t it? I feel it. It’s just crazy and wonderful and marvelous enough that it’s going to work; isn’t it Angelo? Isn’t it?” Lorenzo was breathless.
Angelo looked away. “Yes,” he muttered in assent, “of course it’s going to work.” Taking his leave hurriedly and returning to his own room, he burst into tears.
Sometime later, Lorenzo was aware that the dreadful din in the alcove had stopped. Opening his eyes and bringing them into focus, he saw the Lombard physician standing over him, his thin lips curled in a gloating grin. In his hands he held up two transparent crystalline vials. “Here,” he said, extending his twin treasures to the sick man, “See what I have for you—a remedy fit for a king!”
Machiavelli: The Novel Page 16