Cosimo

“ And in truth, when Lionardo recited the oration in honor of his coronation, Cosimo said to him, without the slightest approach to a smile, "that among his other reasons for prizing the dignity which he had received, was this most worthy and lofty oration which had followed it," [5] as if Cosimo, who had no more faith in white than in black, was a man to pay attention to such nonsense; but he did so to acquire renown at a cheap rate, or because he knew how much literary men love flattery, for if they often make vapory speeches, they oftener still are fed on wind. ”

“ Therefore, my Lorenzo, whilst I applaud you for not despising the writings which teach morals, I beg you to prefer learning from reality instead of from description, as you would prefer a living thing from a dead. Particularly as you have decided to emulate that aged man on whom our Senate bestowed the title of Father of His Country. I mean the great Cosimo, your grandfather and my lord. A man prudent above all men, pious towards God, just and most charitable towards men, temperate in living, diligent in his care for his family, and still more so in the affairs of the Republic ”

“ In short, I said yes,—and so on Sunday morning I went and did the deed.
When I had reached the village, and found myself in the midst of a crowd of peasants coming out from early mass, who looked at me as if I had been a wild beast, I asked for Signor Cosimo’s house. Eight or ten people immediately offered to accompany me thither.
“There it is—up there; do you see that house with a 169little tower on the top?—that’s it. Do you know Sor Cosimo? Ah! he’s a good gentleman! And his brother the priest? And his wife, Sora Flavia? She’s a kind lady, so she is, and gives away ever so much money. ”

“ Naturally, Messer Giacopo’s opposition excited the animosity of Alessandro, who, if he did not actually inspire his assassination, was, at all events, privy to it.
But in spite of all, Cosimo grew and flourished, displaying his father’s courage and his mother’s prudence. At fifteen, his character appeared to be already formed. He was grave of aspect and severe in manner, very backward in forming friendships, and intolerant of familiarities. ”

“ It’s anomalous—it belongs to the Stone Age.”
“I quite agree,” said Cosimo slowly. “But we have our private arrangement about that. It’s quite understood that if it isn’t a success we each go our own way. You’re to be as free as I am, Amory. I’ve no right to choose your friends for you, male or female. If things come to the worst, I fancy I’m not altogether without a sense of fairness and rationalness and philosophy. So our eyes are quite open.” ”

“ Well, at any rate Cosimo must know. She would have felt a traitor to her chum had she kept this from him. “The world draws its own conclusions!” Cosimo must be told that without loss of time. It would be in the highest degree unjust to Cosimo to allow him to remain for another hour in a position so damnably false!
And Amory had been told this by a blue-eyed fashion-artist, whose wiles had no doubt corrupted a young man who, for all Amory knew, might have been one of Hallowells’ shop-walkers! ”

“ Cosimo and his family of course had many other distractions from the affairs of State. In addition to his attainments as a chemist, in which science he especially interested his eldest son, Francesco, he excelled in his knowledge of botany. With passionate devotion to an attractive subject he taught his children the nature and the use of all growing things. At the Pitti Palace he had his laboratories. ”

“ Cosimo was silent for a moment; then his voice came authoritatively out of the darkness. Cosimo was not much of a painter, but he really had views that were often quite well worth hearing.
“You see, Amory, it’s the swing of the pendulum. Action and re-action. Perfectly simple. Take wearing stays, for example. What woman to-day would think of wearing the stays they used to wear? Half the women we know wear none at all, and the other half only these ribbon corsets. And it’s just the same with their views on marriage. ”

“ The fingers rested on his hand.
“Don’t say ‘been,’ Amory—it is,” Cosimo interrupted.
“Such a precious thing. Isn’t it Emerson who says that at bottom all friendship is based on equality of intellectual understanding? It’s a mingling of minds, Cosimo. When we use the same words we mean the same things by them, and—oh, how rare that is! Of course, I know your uncle’s dead, and that may have upset you, and you’ve all sorts of business about property and so on on your mind, but I can’t believe that accounts for all of it. I know you too well, you see! ”

“ His position can be gauged by the advice given to Duke Sforza by his Ambassador to Florence: “When you would have one thing done rather than another, write your opinion or your desire privately to Cosimo, and he will always arrange it for you. Do not waste your time in saying, I would have their opinion, &c.... Popular governments are alien to and diverse from others, and Cosimo cannot be for ever in the Palace as he once was.” ”

“ To their remonstrances Cosimo replied in four memorable sayings: 'Better the State spoiled than the State not ours.' 'Governments cannot be carried on with paternosters.' 'An ell of scarlet makes a burgher.' 'I aim at finite ends.' These maxims represent the whole man,—first, in his egotism, eager to gain Florence for his family, at any risk of her ruin; secondly, in his cynical acceptance of base means to selfish ends; thirdly, in his bourgeois belief that money makes a man, and fine clothes suffice for a citizen; fourthly, in his worldly ambition bent on positive success. ”

“ Those terrible estate-agents and booking-clerks and bank-cashiers and brewers’ travellers of whom the world seemed to be so full! As so many phenomena in the science of vision—solid objects for colour to possess and light to fall upon—she admitted they had their uses; but she was entirely uninterested in them otherwise. Of all the fine things Cosimo had done in the past, she thought he had done nothing finer nor more full of profound meaning than when he had once given a crossing-sweeper a shilling, taken the broom from his hand, and for an hour swept the crossing himself. ”

“ By Maria Ginevra degl’ Alessandri he had a son named Cosimo, who died in November 1461, at about the age of nine.
Cosimo our grandfather, a man of exceeding wisdom, died at Careggi on August 1, 1464, being much debilitated by old age and by gout, to the great grief not only of ourselves and of the whole city but of all Italy, because he was most famous and adorned with many singular virtues. He died in the highest position any Florentine citizen ever attained at any period, and was buried in S. Lorenzo. He refused to make a will and forbade all pomp at his funeral. ”

“ At the foot of the stairs we met Don Paolo returning from his quail nets, puffing and blowing, and grumbling at the Provost’s hurry to get to church. “Was he afraid of not finishing mass in time to get back to dinner, the great glutton? Do, for any sake, go on, Cosimo; do me the kindness—bad luck to this sort of work!—and tell them to be getting ready in the meantime, and I’ll come in ten minutes—if they don’t like that, they may sing mass by themselves....”
“Do you see?” whispered Sor Cosimo to me, “that’s his way. If he doesn’t catch any birds he becomes a regular beast. ”

“ She laughed as Cosimo, who had just put a lump of coal on the fire with his fingers, asked Dorothy whether he might wipe them on her stockings, and made some remark about Spring Novelties when Dorothy said that he might not. It was only Cosimo. Everybody understood. There was just that touch of gentle womanliness in Cosimo (Amory thought) that perfects and finishes a man. ”

“ Aunt Jerry blushed; Mrs. Deschamps, who was sipping champagne at the time, had to have her back slapped by M. Criqui, and did not recover for several minutes; Cosimo’s laugh rivalled that of Mr. Wellcome himself. And then Mr. Rainbow rounded on Cosimo likewise.... For nothing succeeds like success, and Mr. Rainbow, having scored once, immediately scored again. If little birds were to be believed, he said, giving the discreetest of glances at Cosimo and Amory, they might be having another jollification before long. ”

“ As they passed through Hammersmith, Cosimo longed to break out, “I haven’t changed, Amory—you’d know I thought more of you than ever if you’d seen the pretty but awfully stupid sort of girl I’ve been seeing while I’ve been away—everything we’ve agreed a self-respecting woman can’t be any longer: a mere man’s toy, a chattel, property, on sale just as much as if she was in an Oriental slave-market, economically dependent, hopelessly apathetic to everything that’s fine and feminist and new——” He knew that Amory would have called that “facing the facts.” ”

“ Cosimo thought so, and put out his hand rather aimlessly.
But Amory drew her own hand back. The pathetic [258] weakness passed. Wearily she laughed now.
“Oh no, better not, Cosimo. There are perfectly innocent things that we can’t allow ourselves. It’s hard, isn’t it? but you see what the world is. It’s probably damned us already; we’re probably damned at this moment for being together here; but as long as we give it no reason it only recoils on its own head. ”

“ Cosimo had two sons, our father Piero, born ... and our uncle Giovanni, born ... On September ... 1433 our grandfather Cosimo was imprisoned in the Palace, and in danger of losing his head. On September 9th he was banished to Padua, together with his brother Lorenzo, a sentence confirmed by the Balìa of 1433 on the 11th, and on the 16th December he was permitted to reside anywhere in the Venetian territory, but not nearer to Florence than Padua. ”

“ Pope Pius II. also declared, “Nothing is denied to Cosimo. He is the arbiter of peace and of war, and the moderator of the laws. Not so much a private citizen as the lord of the country. The policy of the Republic is discussed in his house; he it is who gives commands to the magistrates. Nought of royalty is wanting to him save the name and the state of a king.”
Contessina de’ Medici to Ginevra, wife of her son Giovanni, at the Baths of Petriolo
Dearest Daughter,—In these days I received a letter from thee and learn thou art well, which rejoices me. ”

“ So you will be my Cosimo, and I your Amory. Isn’t that the higher and the better way?”
“Oh, but, Amory, it’s so hard! You know you’ve often said yourself that the physical relation has its [284] proper place! How—how would the world go on without it?”
“The world, Cosimo, goes on by the progress of ideas. Ideas can be in a sense our children, yours and mine. And these are born of no contact but the contact of the mingling spirits. I will write to you quite frequently—after a time, when I have forgotten a little; I will write such letters as you’d never, never receive from anybody else! ”

“ Cosimo obtained from the Emperor Charles V. the full recognition of his title of Duke of Florence.
There were great doings at the Palazzo Medici in the May of 1539, when Cosimo welcomed his bride, Donna Eleanora, second daughter of Don Pedro de Toledo, Duca d’Alba, the King of Spain’s Viceroy at Naples. She was certainly no beauty, but a woman of estimable qualities, and profoundly imbued with the spirit of devotion. Hardly, perhaps, the wife Cosimo would have chosen, had not reasons of State as usual guided him. Eleanora, nevertheless, proved herself a worthy spouse and an exemplary mother. ”

“ They had seemed to be merry up to then; but all agreed afterwards that only with the bringing up of the coffee and liqueurs and toothpicks did what might be called the real merriment begin.
At six o’clock that evening Amory and Cosimo took tea in the studio in Cheyne Walk and compared notes of the events of the day. Cosimo was ecstatic. He had not believed such things existed. Amory’s utterances, too, were as breathless and explosive as his own, but seemed somehow to lack ring. A close observer might have supposed her to be acting a brightness. Then for the twentieth time Cosimo guffawed. ”

“ Come, let us go on; the ladies will follow by themselves.”
“They have already started, sir,” said Gostino.
“All the better; come along.”
I should have been thankful to sit down and rest for a minute, but had to follow Sor Cosimo, who, in order to get away from his brother, set off at such a pace that it was difficult to keep up with him.
Mountains stand firm, and men move on. When Sor Cosimo, hurrying into the door of the canon’s house, left me under the church-porch, my eye fell on a well-dressed man whose face somehow seemed familiar. ”

“ Amory replied, as simply.
"Yes," said Cosimo thoughtfully.... "It's certainly an idea."
"And you know how people have been getting at the 'Novum' lately, and even suggesting that Prang was merely a pen-name for Wilkinson himself."
"Yes, yes."
"Well, if you went, for six months, say, or even three, nobody'd be able to say after that that you didn't know all about it."
"No," Cosimo replied.
"The stupid people go. Why not the people with eyes and minds?" ”

“ This has been the work of the aforesaid Lord Duke Cosimo, who, being a man of most happy genius and most profound judgment both in the government of his people and in all other things, grudges neither expense nor anything else in his desire to make all the fortifications and other buildings, both public and private, correspond to the greatness of his own mind, and not less beautiful than useful or less useful than beautiful. ”

“ A liberal and discerning patron to artists and men of letters, Cosimo founded libraries in the Badia of Fiesole and in S. Marco; in the latter he had a cell for his own use. To the Greeks who came to the Council of Florence, or soon afterwards fled thither when Constantinople was captured by the Turks, he extended a splendid hospitality in his palace in Via Larga. ”