stab Lorenzo. The signal was the breaking of the Eucharistic wafer,
and at this solemn moment Giuliano was instantly killed, with one stab
in the heart and nineteen elsewhere, Francesco so overdoing his attack
that he severely wounded himself too; but Lorenzo was in time to see
the beginning of the assault, and, making a movement to escape, he
prevented the priest from doing aught but inflict a gash in his neck,
and, springing away, dashed behind the altar to the old sacristy,
where certain of his friends who followed him banged the heavy bronze
doors on the pursuing foe. Those in the cathedral, mean-while, were in
a state of hysterical alarm; the youthful cardinal was hurried into
the new sacristy; Guglielmo de' Pazzi bellowed forth his innocence
in loud tones; and his murderous brother and Bandini got off.

Order being restored, Lorenzo was led by a strong bodyguard to
the Palazzo Medici, where he appeared at a window to convince the
momentarily increasing crowd that he was still living. Meanwhile
things were going not much more satisfactorily for the Pazzi at
the Palazzo Vecchio, where, according to the plan, the gonfalonier,
Cesare Petrucci, was to be either killed or secured. The Archbishop
Salviati, who was to effect this, managed his interview so clumsily
that Petrucci suspected something, those being suspicious times,
and, instead of submitting to capture, himself turned the key on his
visitors. The Pazzi faction in the city, meanwhile, hoping that all
had gone well in the Palazzo Vecchio, as well as in the cathedral
(as they thought), were running through the streets calling "Viva la
Libertà!" to be met with counter cries of "Palle! palle!"--the palle
being the balls on the Medici escutcheon, still to be seen all over
Florence and its vicinity and on every curtain in the Uffizi.

The truth gradually spreading, the city then rose for the Medici and