There is a quarter of Venice not much visited by tourists, lying as
it does outside their beat, away from the Rialto, at a considerable
distance from the Frari and San Rocco, in what might almost pass for a
city separated by a hundred miles from the Piazza. This is the quarter
of San Polo, one corner of which, somewhere between the back of
the Palazzo Foscari and the Campo di San Polo, was the scene of
a memorable act of vengeance in the year 1546. Here Lorenzino de'
Medici, the murderer of his cousin Alessandro, was at last tracked
down and put to death by paid cut-throats. How they succeeded in their
purpose, we know in every detail from the narrative dictated by the
chief assassin. His story so curiously illustrates the conditions of
life in Italy three centuries ago, that I have thought it worthy of
abridgment. But, in order to make it intelligible, and to paint the
manners of the times more fully, I must first relate the series of
events which led to Lorenzino's murder of his cousin Alessandro, and
from that to his own subsequent assassination. Lorenzino de' Medici,
the Florentine Brutus of the sixteenth century, is the hero of the
tragedy. Some of his relatives, however, must first appear upon the
scene before he enters with a patriot's knife concealed beneath a
court-fool's bauble.