These men cost him yearly
20,000 gold florins. He gave Panormita 1,000 for his work: Facio
received for the 'Historia Alfonsi', besides a yearly income of 500
ducats, a present of 1,500 more when it was finished, with the words,
'It is not given to pay you, for your work would not be paid for if I
gave you the fairest of my cities; but in time I hope to satisfy you'.
When he took Giannozzo Manetti as his secretary on the most brilliant
conditions, he said to him, 'My last crust I will share with you'. When
Giannozzo first came to bring the congratulations of the Florentine
government on the marriage of Prince Ferrante, the impression he made
was so great, that the King sat motionless on the throne, 'like a
brazen statue, and did not even brush away a fly, which had settled on
his nose at the beginning of the oration'. His favourite haunt seems to
have been the library of the castle at Naples, where he would sit at a
window overlooking the bay, and listen to learned debates on the
Trinity. For he was profoundly religious, and had the Bible, as well as
Livy and Seneca, read to him, till after fourteen perusals he knew it
almost by heart. Who can fully understand the feeling with which he
regarded the supposititious remains of Livy at Padua? When, by dint of
great entreaties, he obtained an arm-bone of the skeleton from the
Venetians, and received it with solemn pomp at Naples, how strangely
Christian and pagan sentiment must have been blended in his heart!
During a campaign in the Abruzzi, when the distant Sulmona, the
birthplace of Ovid, was pointed out to him, he saluted the spot and
returned thanks to its tutelary genius.
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