he was never approached by boscoli, and if he had been, machiavelli would have shut the door on his face because he's not big on conspiracies, he writes about them saying how often they fail and how dangerous they are. machiavelli could be a political agitator but he was not somebody who believed in violent overthrow of legitimate government. he was very much a bureaucrat and i think one of the things about machiavelli, the first man who really speaks for the bureaucracy, the federal bureaucracy, the man who puts the values of the state of government over the people, and he is the first to articulate that view, that the french, reason of state, and he is the proponent of that kind of system. host: when did he marry? guest: he married in 1501, a young woman from the neighboring quarter of florence named marietta corsini who was probably slightly above him socially. we don't know that much about her because women were not really considered worthy of -- machiavelli didn't consider her worthy of spending a lot of time and effort recording her sort of day-to-day life. marriage in florence was