There had been centuries of course when our family had warred with other hill towns and 
forts, when castle besieged castle and walls were ripped down as soon as they were built, 
and out of the city of Florence had gone the ever quarreling and murderous Guelfs and 
Ghibellines.
  The old Commune of Florence had sent armies to tear down castles like ours and reduce 
any threatening Lord to nothingness. But that time was long over.
  We had survived due to cleverness and good choices, and also because we were much off 
to ourselves, in high craggy uninviting country, crowning a true mountain, as this is 
where the Alps come down into Tuscany, and those castles most near to us were abandoned 
ruins.
  Our nearest neighbor did rule his own mountain enclave of villages in loyalty to the 
Duke of Milan.
  But he didn't bother with us or we him. It was a remote political matter.
  Our walls were thirty feet high, immensely thick, older than the castle and keeps, old 
indeed beyond anyone's most romantic tales and constantly being thickened and repaired, 
and inside the compound there existed three little villages busy with good vineyards that 
yielded marvelous red wine; prosperous beehives; blackberries; and wheat and the like; 
with plenty of chickens and cows; and enormous stables for our horses.
  I never knew how many people labored in our little world. The house was full of clerks 
who took care of such things, and very seldom did my father sit in judgment on any sort 
of case himself or was there cause to go to the courts of Florence.
  Our church was the designated church for all the country round, so that those few who 
lived in less protected little hamlets down the mountain - and there were plenty - came 
to us for their baptisms, and marriages, and such, and we had for long periods of time 
within our walls a Dominican priest who said Mass for us every morning.
  In olden times, the forest had been severely cut down on our mountain so that no 
invading enemy could make his way up the slopes, but by my time no such protection was 
necessary.
  The woods had grown back full and sweet in some gullies and over old paths, even as 
wild as it is now, and almost up to the walls. One could make out clearly from our towers 
a dozen or so small towns descending to the valleys, with their little quilts of tilled 
fields, orchards of olive trees and vineyards. They were all under our governance and 
loyal to us. If there had been any war they would have come running to our gates as their 
ancestors had done, and rightly so.
  There were market days, village festivals, saints' days, and a little alchemy now and 
then, and occasionally even a local miracle. It was a good land, ours.
  Visiting clerics always stayed a long time. It wasn't uncommon to have two or three 
priests in various towers of the castle or in the lower, newer, more modern stone 
buildings. I had been taken to Florence to be educated when I was very small, living in 
deluxe and invigorating style in the palazzo of my mother's uncle, who died before I was 
thirteen, and it was then - when the house was closed - that I was brought home, with two 
elderly aunts, and after that only visited Florence on occasion.
  My father was still at heart an old-fashioned man, instinctively an indomitable Lord, 
though he was content to keep his distance from the power struggles of the capital, to 
have huge accounts in the Medici banks and to live an old-style courtly life in his own 
domain, visiting Cosimo de' Medici himself when he did journey into Florence on business.
  But when it came to his son, my father wanted that I should be reared as a prince, a 
padrone, a knight, and I had to learn all the skills and values of a knight, and at 
thirteen, I could ride in full battle dress, my helmeted head bowed, at full speed with 
my spear thrust towards the straw-filled target. I had no difficulty with it. It was as 
much fun as hunting, or swimming in mountain streams, or having horse races with the 
village boys. I took to it without rebellion.
  I was, however, a divided being. The mental part of me had been nourished in Florence 
by excellent teachers of Latin, Greek, philosophy and theology, and I had been deep into 
the boys' pageants and plays of the city, often taking the leading parts in the dramas 
presented by my own Confraternity in my uncle's house, and I knew how to solemnly portray 
the Biblical Isaac about to be sacrificed by the obedient Abraham, as well as the 
charming Angel Gabriel discovered by a suspicious St. Joseph with his Virgin Mary.
  I pined for all that now and then, the books, the lectures in the Cathedrals to which 
I'd listened with precocious interest, and the lovely nights in my uncle's Florentine 
house when I'd fallen asleep to the sounds of spectacular opera extravaganzas, my mind 
brim full of the dazzle of miraculous figures swooping down on wires, lutes and drums 
playing wildly, dancers frolicking almost like acrobats and voices soaring beautifully in 
unison.
  It had been an easy childhood. And in the boys' Confraternity to which I belonged, I'd 
met the poorer children of Florence, the sons of the merchants, orphans and boys from the 
monasteries and schools, because that is the way it was in my time for a landed Lord. You 
had to mix with the people.
  I think I crept out of the house a lot as a small child, easily as much as I slipped 
out of the castle later. I remember too much of the festivals and saints' days and 
processions of Florence for a disciplined child to have seen. I was too often slipping in 
and out of the crowd, looking at the spectacularly decorated floats in honor of the 
saints, and marveling at the solemnity of those in silent ranks who carried candles and 
walked very slowly as if they were in a trance of devotion.
  Yes, I must have been a scamp. I know I was. I went out by the kitchen. I bribed the 
servants. I had too many friends who were out-and-out routies or beasties. I got into 
mayhem and then ran home. We played ball games and had battles in the piazzas, and the 
priests ran us off with switches and threats. I was good and bad, but not ever really 
wicked.
  When I died to this world, at the age of sixteen, I never looked on a daylighted street 
again, not in Florence or anywhere. Well, I saw the best of it, that I can say. I can 
envisage with no difficulty the spectacle of the Feast of St. John, when every single 
solitary shop in Florence had to put out front all of its costly wares, and monks and 
friars sang the sweetest hymns on their way to the Cathedral to give thanks to God for 
the blessed prosperity of the city.
  I could go on. There is no end to the praise one can heap upon the Florence of those 
times, for she was a city of men who worked at trades and business yet made the greatest 
art, of sharp politicians and true raving saints, of deep-souled poets and the most 
audacious scoundrels. I think Florence knew many things by that time that would only much 
later be learnt in France and England, and which are not known in some countries to this 
day. Two things were true. Cosimo was the most powerful man in all the world. And the 
people, and only the people, ruled Florence then and forever.
  But back to the castle. I kept up my reading and studies at home, switching from knight 
to scholar in a twinkling. If there was any shadow on my life, it was that at sixteen I 
was old enough to go to a real university, and I knew it, and I sort of wanted to do it, 
but then again, I was raising new hawks, training them myself and hunting with them, and 
the country round was irresistible.
  By this age of sixteen, I was considered bookish by the clan of elder kinsmen who 
gathered at the table every night, my parents' uncles mostly, and all very much of a 
former time when "bankers had not run the world," who had marvelous tales to tell of the