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 fled from him: he it was who kept it at a distance, and, had he liked, a triumphal life could have been his. To Italy he was the incarnation of its genius. At the end of his career, the last survivor of the great Renaissance, he personified it—he alone was a whole century of glory. Artists were not the only people who regarded him as a supernatural being. Princes bowed before him. Francis I. and Catherine de' Medici rendered him homage. Cosimo de' Medici wished to make him a senator; and when he came to Rome treated him as an equal, made him sit by his side, and conversed with him confidentially. Cosimo's son, Don Francesco de' Medici, received him with berretta in hand, "showing a boundless respect for so rare a man." They honoured "his great virtue" no less than his genius. His old age was surrounded by as much glory as that of Goethe or Hugo. But he was a man of another metal. He had neither the