Bernard Bandino, after picking himself up at the New Sacristy doors,
immediately realised the failure of the conspiracy, and, wise man that
he was, put his own safety before all other considerations. He worked
his way through the struggling crowd in the Cathedral and got out by the
south portal. Luckily enough, the Cardinal's horse had been left
tethered by its affrighted groom hard by, so without awaiting news from
the Archbishop, he vaulted into the saddle and made off at a hand gallop
to the Porta Santa Croce.

With more cunning than Giacopo had shown, he made, not to the Tuscan
hills, but to the Tuscan sea, and reached Corneto just in time to board
a ship bound for the East, and at the point of weighing anchor. At
Galata he went ashore and communicated with Sixtus, who sent him a
goodly sum of money and sundry Papal safeguards, with his blessing!

There he lay hid for many weeks, but, as luck would have it, one day he
came out of his lair in a Turkish divan, and encountered an agent of the
Medici, who recognised him, followed him, and charged him before the
Pasha. Put in irons by the Sultan's command, communication was made with
Lorenzo. An envoy was despatched to Constantinople, to whom the wretch
was handed, and, two months after his crimes in Santa Maria del Fiore,
his living body was added to the string of stinking corpses, upon the
side of the Campanile, which still dangled in their iron chains, betwixt
earth and heaven, rained on and withered by the elements, and fed upon
by carrion!

All the seven sons of Piero de' Pazzi were banished for life. They seem
to have had no very intimate knowledge of the conspiracy; indeed, they
were all away from Florence, except the fourth, Renato, and he was
beheaded "for not having revealed the plot, he being privy to the