However, as he preferred active to professorial work, he began at this time to practice at the bar, where he soon ranked as an able advocate and eloquent speaker.

This reputation, together with his character for gravity and insight, determined the Signoria to send him on an embassy to the Court of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1512.

Thus Guicciardini entered on the real work of his life as a diplomatist and statesman.

We may also conclude with safety that it was at the court of that crowned hypocrite and traitor to all loyalty of soul that he learned his first lessons in political cynicism.

The court of Spain under Ferdinand the Catholic was a perfect school of perfidy, where even an Italian might discern deeper reaches of human depravity and formulate for his own guidance a philosophy of despair.