There were several reasons which rendered such an examination
historically interesting and curious. A certain degree of doubt has
been cast--mainly by Grimm--on the question whether the tomb be in
fact that of Lorenzo, the father of Catherine de' Medici, the
celebrated queen of France--whether it be not rather that of Giuliano,
his uncle. For my part, I had always thought that there was little or
no foundation for the doubt. The main features of the story of
Alexander will probably be in the memory of the reader. The Florentine
republic and liberty were destroyed in 1527 by the united forces of
the traitor pope, the Medicean Clement VII., and Charles V., with the
understanding that this Alexander should marry Margaret, the emperor's
illegitimate daughter, and that Florence should become a dukedom to
dower the young couple withal. Who and what this Alexander was has
always been one of the puzzles of history. He was, tradition says,
very swarthy, and was generally believed to be the son of a Moorish
slave-mother. He was certainly illegitimate; and the question, Who was
his father? was always a doubtful one, though he has generally been
called the son of Lorenzo.
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