Another story affects the career of the Chamberlain Troilo d’Orsini. He sought sanctuary in France and was befriended by Queen Catherine, to whom his mistress, the unhappy Duchess of Bracciano, had commended “the little kid.” Whether he accepted the rôle of father to save the fame of the defunct Grand Duke is not known, but the unfortunate, if guilty, fugitive was stabbed in the streets of Paris by bravoes sent after him in the pay of the Duke of Bracciano.
“We’ll have none of her among our dead!”
These were the brutal words of Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, at the villa of Poggio a Caiano on the morning of 21st October 1587. They formed the curt reply his Eminence vouchsafed to Bishop Abbioso of Ravenna, “her” confessor.
The bishop, looking to favours from Ferdinando, who succeeded Francesco as third Grand Duke of Tuscany, sent overnight, the following message to his new Sovereign:
“This moment at 8 p.m. Her Most Serene Highness the Grand Duchess passed to another life. The present messenger awaits your Highness’ orders as to the disposal of the body.”
“The body!”
Yes, it was “the body” of as loving a woman as ever lived in Florence. She had been the most faithful of wives, the most attractive of consorts, and one of the most generous of benefactresses. It was “the body” of as unselfish a sister-in-law as any man, high or low, ever had, who strove her utmost to propitiate, screen, and honour the self-seeking brother of her husband. It was “the body” of Bianca Cappello!
Ferdinando had, for years, plotted her death, and now he had accomplished his dastardly design—a design which also made him the murderer of his brother, Francesco de’ Medici.
To be sure, the double tragedy was adjudged no tragedy by such as waited for favours from the coming ruler, and the mysteriously sudden deaths of Francesco de’ Medici and his wife Bianca were assigned to natural causes by well-paid dependants upon Ferdinando’s bounty and favour. The bloodguiltiness of fratricidal Ferdinando was well whitewashed by his courtiers, and historians have painted him in colours that ill befit his character. So is history written ofttimes and again.
Pope Sixtus VI. had all the gruesome circumstances placed before him, and whilst he was too weak or too cunning—it matters not which—to charge the princely murderer with his deeds, he tacitly accepted the finding of his commission of inquiry:—“Ferdinando de’ Medici, Cardinal-Priest of San Giorgio, Grand Duke of Tuscany, poisoned his brother and his sister at Poggio a Caiano.”
Now must the story be told, gathered out of records, more or less reliable—more or less biassed. It is a story which brings a blush to the cheek and a lump in the throat, and calls forth feelings of detestation for the murderer. At the same time it is a thrilling story of a love stronger than death.
Late one dark night, in November 1563, a gondola shot out from the deep shadow of the church of Sant’ Appolinare, upon the Rio della Canonica, in Venice, dipped under the Ponte del Storto, and sped its way, swiftly propelled by two stalwart boatmen.
There was little use to cry out “Leï” or “Stali,” for no other craft was afloat at that hour, and the gondola was unimpeded in its course. Crossing the Grand Canal the helmsman made for the Guidecca, and on past the Punta di Santa Maria, and on still, away across the wide and silent lagune, right on to Fusina, on the mainland.
In the herse were two persons—a boy and a girl—fast clasped in each other’s arms: she sobbing upon his breast, he comforting her with hot kisses upon her lips. They were Pietro de’ Buonaventuri and Bianca de’ Cappelli. The elopement was complete, and all Pietro’s manhood rose as he held his sweetheart in a strong embrace: he would guard her with his life, come what might. He knew they were safe from present pursuit, for to none had he revealed his plans; but he also knew that a price would be set upon their heads, and daggers dodge their course. Stepping lightly ashore with his sweetheart, the young man paid his boatmen and bade them not hurry back to Venice. Then the young couple took the road to Bologna, on their way to Florence. They had very little money between them, but Bianca had stuffed into her pocket her jewellery and Pietro had just received his quarter’s salary.
At the Cappello mansion, on the morrow, was a scene of wild confusion. Messer Bartolommeo Cappello was like a madman; he demanded his daughter at the hand of her faithful maid, Maria del Longhi, and laid the matter at once before the Supreme Council. On enquiry, Pietro Buonaventuri, who had been for long Bianca’s most favoured admirer, was neither at the Salviati bank, where he was occupied as a clerk, nor at his lodgings.
The daughter of a Venetian patrician gone off with a banker’s clerk! The idea maddened the old man—he would trace them, and punish them, and all who had assisted their flight. Messer Giovanni Battista Buonaventuri, Pietro’s uncle, the manager of the bank; Bianca’s maid and her parents; the two gondolieri and their wives; and ever so many others were cast into prison.
No news came of the erring couple, and now they were well ahead of pursuit. Two thousand ducats was the blood-money offered for Pietro, dead or alive. Assassins bought for gold followed on the road to Florence, but never caught up their quarry. Messer Bartolommeo’s vengeance knew no bounds, and his new wife, Madonna Lucrezia de’ Grimani-Contarini fanned the flames. She hated Bianca.
The winter sun had long ago set beyond the stone-pines of Monte Oliveto, and the deep blue Tuscan sky had turned to sober slate, purpled with the fading glow of northern crimson. It was a night near Christmas, and Ser Zenobio Buonaventuri sat at his table, in his modest little one-storied house on the Piazza San Marco, putting the finishing touches to his précis of the day’s notarial work, in the Corte della Mercanzia. His worthy spouse, Madonna Costanza’s weary fingers had just completed the stitching of the last of twelve pairs of kid gloves, for her employers, of the Guild of the Fur and Skin Merchants—the Salvetti, who were her relatives.
They had been talking, as was their wont, about their dashing, handsome son Pietro, the pride of their hearts, who was away in Venice, a clerk under his uncle, Giovanni Battista. They were a lonesome couple, and they deplored their four years’ parting from their only boy. To be sure, he had often, indeed regularly, written to them happy, contented letters. Moreover, Messer Giovanni Battista had sent them very satisfactory reports of his application to business, but he named one subject, which filled the hearts of the doting parents with apprehension—it was, of course, a story of romance. Pietro had a sweetheart—that in itself caused little uneasiness; what healthy-minded young fellow had not! But Pietro had an unusually amorous nature, and his love escapades had not been few in Florence. In Venice, “the Court of Venus,” he revelled in the fair beauty and the freedom of maidens, so much more lovely and so much less reserved, than the Florentine girls he knew. But when Messer Giovanni Battista named as his innamorata the young daughter of one of the proudest patricians of the Serene Republic, the worthy couple were in trepidation lest the lad’s passion should lead to regrettable embarrassments.
No love was lost between the sister Republics, and the feeling of hostility in public matters was carried into private life. Pietro never named the romance, but Ser Zenobio, by way of meeting—as was his wont—his troubles half way, penned anxious cautions to his son. The Buonaventuri, though by no means an obscure family, were not Grandi like the Cappelli, Lords of Venice. Moreover, Bianca’s father was a wealthy man and a member of the Supreme Council, whilst Ser Zenobio was merely a modest notary of no great fame or fortune.
It was bedtime, but hark! at the door were shuffling steps and voices whispering; and presently there came a gentle tap—repeated once or twice. Ser Zenobio rose to see what was passing outside his house. Peering into the gloom he saw two figures—one a girl’s—and a voice he knew full well said:
“Father, we have come to crave shelter and protection.”
“Who are you? My boy Pietro! And what are you doing here in Florence, and at this time of night?”
Madonna Costanza was peeping over his shoulder, and both of them were greatly agitated, and awaited with anxiety Pietro’s reply.
“We have come from Venice and are very tired. See, father and mother, this is Bianca.”
Sternly answered Ser Zenobio. “What do you mean, Pietro? What shame is this you have done your parents? Who is Bianca, and what are you doing with her in Florence? You never said you were coming home. Explain yourself, or come not into your father’s house.”
Heavy rain was falling, and Bianca was weeping as Pietro led her into the light of the candle his mother held.
“Let them come in anyhow, Zenobio, and we can hear what they have got to say, without the neighbours hearing us,” put in the tender-hearted woman.
With that, Ser Zenobio gave his hand to Bianca and drew her and Pietro within the door, and then, in sterner tones, he commanded his son to tell what he had done.
Briefly Pietro recounted the story of his love and how Bianca returned it. He spoke of Messer Bartolommeo’s harshness and of the unkindness of Bianca’s stepmother, Madonna Lucrezia de’ Grimani-Contarini—the Patriarch’s sister. He described their plight and the perils which threatened them. But, when he went on to hint at Bianca’s condition, the loving heart of Madonna Costanza melted towards the beauteous, weeping girl, and she drew her to her bosom to embrace and comfort her.
Long and anxious vigil the four kept that winter’s night. The outcome of their deliberations was the marriage of Pietro and Bianca, on 12th December, privately, at Ser Zenobio’s, with the priestly blessing at San Marco’s across the way.
It was deemed expedient that the young people should conceal themselves as much as possible, in view of the extreme measures taken by the Serene Republic. If caught, Pietro was to be slain and Bianca enclosed in a convent. The abduction of a noble Venetian was a capital offence, and the girl’s dowry was confiscated by the State.
Soon the news of the elopement ran through Florence and set everybody talking. The reward of two thousand gold ducats was a tempting bait for desperadoes and others in need of coin. Everybody wished to see the beauteous Venetian and have a chat with bold Pietro, for, of course, no Florentine blamed them! Who could?
Don Francesco, Duke Cosimo’s eldest son, was in Bavaria making believe-courtship with the Archduchess Joanne, the Emperor’s daughter, when the gossip about Pietro and Bianca reached him. He, of course, knew nothing of the Buonaventuri, nor of the Cappelli, but romance is romance in every age and degree of human life! He determined on his return to Florence to find out the amorous young couple and judge for himself of the charms of the fair girl-bride.
Away back, in the grounds of the monastery of San Marco, was the garden-casino of Cosimo, “Padre della Patria,” a delightful retreat. Francesco received it as a gift from his father, and there he was accustomed to entertain his friends and familiars.
Passing, on his way thither—as he often did, with a frolicsome party of young bloods—the humble dwelling of the Buonaventuri, he chanced, one day, to look up at a half-open window—the jalousies were thrown back, and there, sitting at her needlework, was the very girl he sought!
There could be no manner of doubt who she was, no Florentine maiden was so fair, and no eyes in Florence were so bright. Casually asking a member of his suite whose house they were passing, Don Francesco tossed up his glove at the girl and passed on.
Another person witnessed this love passage, the Marchesa Anna Mondragone, wife of Francesco’s old governor and his chamberlain—she was on the balcony of the house at the corner of the Piazza to make her usual curtsey to the Prince. When the Marchese came home that night, he told his wife that the Prince had seen Bianca Buonaventuri, and had enlisted his services to obtain an interview with the lovely Venetian.
Nothing does a woman of the world love more than to be a go-between where sentimental couples are concerned—be it for their weal or be it for their woe—and so the Marchesa sympathetically addressed herself to the diplomatic task of bringing the two young people together. She struck up a passing acquaintance with Madonna Costanza, and upon the plea that she wished for the opinion of her daughter-in-law upon the question of a Venetian costume she was about to wear at a reception at the palace, asked her to bring Bianca to the Mondragone mansion.
Accordingly, a few days after the affair of the kid glove, the three women were closeted in the Marchesa’s boudoir, where the Marchese joined them. Calling off Bianca to look at some jewellery, she whisked her into another room, and presently, leaving her absorbed in the beauty of the gems, retired.
Bianca looked up, somewhat annoyed to find herself alone, and, as she did so, she detected a slight movement behind the arras over the door. The next moment it was raised, and there stepped into the apartment none other than Don Francesco de’ Medici!
Bianca stood there, speechless and embarrassed, but the Prince, approaching, took her hand in his, kissed it, and placed her beside him on a couch. When she had recovered from her surprise, Bianca fell upon her knees and, weeping, besought Francesco to befriend her and Pietro. Raising her to the couch once more, he folded her in an impassioned embrace, and promised his protection and what she would besides!
Very greatly moved was the young man by Bianca’s rare beauty of face and form, and by the tenderness of her voice, and, perhaps more than all, by the undoubting confidence she reposed in him. Bianca was such a very different sort of girl to cold, unattractive and ill-educated Giovanna.
Immediate steps were taken to obtain the recension of the punitive decrees of the Venetian Council, but they proved abortive, and nothing could be done in Venice for Bianca and Pietro. In Florence Don Francesco could do as he willed. His father, Cosimo, had already made over to him much of his sovereign authority.
In July 1564, Bianca Buonaventuri became the mother of a little girl, to whom the name Pellegrina—her own dear mother’s name—was given. The days of convalescence quickly passed, and Francesco paid his innamorata increasing court. Upon Pietro and Bianca he bestowed a charming palace, on the Lung ‘Arno, and provided them with ample means to maintain themselves and it. He appointed Pietro Keeper of his Wardrobe and Clerk of his Privy Closet, on condition that his fascinating girl-wife should be regarded pretty much as “La cosa di Francesco.”
The more the Prince saw of Bianca the stronger grew his passion. She was perfectly irresistible. After the fashion of the day, he poured forth his devotion in graceful madrigals—the first of which, began as follows:—
Meanwhile preparations were going forward for the reception and marriage of the Austrian Archduchess, who reached Florence on 16th November 1565. Reports of her husband’s infatuation for Bianca Buonaventuri had of course travelled to Vienna, and Giovanna had not long to wait for their verification. She could not brook the fouling of the marriage-bed nor permit the liaison to go on undenounced.
Francesco met her ill-humour with a frown. He pointed to the morals of her father’s court, and to the Florentine cult of Platonism, and he bade her mind her own business and not make troubles. Her appeals to Duke Cosimo and to her brother the Emperor Maximilian were in vain. Francesco plainly hinted that she might go back to Vienna if she liked, for nothing that she could say or do would alter his admiration and his devotion for Bianca Buonaventuri. The strictness of married life had long ago disappeared from the conventions of Florentine society. Mutual relationships proved that men might live as they pleased, so long as they did not renounce the offspring, even when they were assured that it was not their own. The term “Partiti”—“Sharers” or “Partners”— perhaps less literally but more emphatically, “kindred souls,” was bestowed upon this relationship. Still at no time was Francesco a sensuous man or a libertine like his father. His devotionally-affected mother, Eleanora de Toledo, had trained him in moral ways, and had called forth in him regard for religion and sympathy for charitable objects. Possessed of great self-command and reticence, he never betrayed himself in any way; passionate he was beyond the ordinary, but never revengeful. He loved one woman, and only one, and to her he proved himself faithful until death took them away together; but she was not Giovanna, his political wife, she was Bianca, the wife of his heart and mind.
Next to his love of Bianca was his love of money: no prince of his house was ever half so wealthy or so sparing. Avarice came to him through the rapacity of Giovanna’s German followers and through her own extravagance.
The year after his marriage, Bianca Buonaventuri was introduced at Court as Bianca Cappello. The young Duchess of course was furious, and pointedly refused all intercourse with her rival. Bianca, on the other hand, laid herself out to propitiate the dour Austrian princess and to stifle slander. Still a mere girl, she was in full command of all the moves in woman’s strategy. There was no school like that of Venice for the display of tact and fascination. To be sure, she was living in a crystal palace, but she was perfectly ready to repair all damages. Bianca was severely upon her guard, and her conduct was perfectly correct in every way.
Very rarely did young Cardinal Ferdinando visit Florence, but in 1569, Cosimo, his father, sent for him, that he might embrace him before he died, being, as he thought, on the point of death. At the magnificently immoral Court of the Vatican he had heard the gossip about the lovely Venetian girl who had so completely captured his brother Francesco. Quite naturally, the by no means ascetic young ecclesiastic desired greatly to see for himself the Venetian charmer, and he journeyed to Florence, bent upon judging for himself.
Francesco greeted Ferdinando quite affectionately—there was no reason why he should not—and unhesitatingly introduced him to Bianca. At the impressionable age of twenty, the young Prince fell at once under the spell of those bewitching eyes. Who could resist her? In the fulness of her womanhood Bianca Buonaventuri was without rival among the fair women of Florence, and the boy-Cardinal made, like all the rest, impassioned love to her.
Back again in Rome and busy with his plans for the great Medici Palace in the Eternal City he lost none of his admiration for his brother’s “Flora,” till evil tongues began to wag around him. Was not he, Ferdinando, Don Francesco’s heir-presumptive? Duchess Giovanna had given her husband none but daughters; she, too, was in delicate health and might die without a son being born. What then? Why, of course, Francesco would marry Bianca Buonaventuri, and by her secure the succession. Whether he was destined for the Papacy or not, the Grand Duchy was his by inheritance, and it behoved him, they said, to guard his rights and further his expectations!
Ferdinando listened to this tittle-tattle and it caused ambitious distrust of Francesco and Bianca. As heir-presumptive to a temporal sovereignty, he began to surround himself with all the attributes and circumstances of his position. His palace was regal in its magnificence, his entertainments were upon a princely scale, and he assumed an overbearing demeanour in his relations with Francesco.
Instigated by inveterate intriguers in his entourage, he quite hypocritically affected to be shocked at his brother’s liaison with Bianca, although he made no demur at his father’s relations with Eleanora degli Albizzi, Cammilla de’ Martelli, and other innamorate. Giovanna was only too delighted to have the invaluable assistance of the young Cardinal in her campaign against “the hated Venetian.” At length he took the bold step of expostulating with Francesco upon his intercourse with the captivating rival of Giovanna. The Prince was furious, and warned his brother never to name the subject again, and on no account to meddle with his private affairs.
Ferdinando replied that he was quite content to abstain at a price. The truth was, that his lavish extravagance had exhausted his revenue and restricted his powers of borrowing, and he was in lack of funds for the maintenance of his state in Rome.
In a weak moment Francesco gave heed to Ferdinando’s stipulations, and provided him with funds and increased his family allowance. In gratitude, the Cardinal threw into his brother’s teeth the fact of his position as heir-presumptive, and insisted upon the purchase of a piece of land at the confluence of the Pesa with the Arno. There he built his Villa Ambrogiana, which became the seat of an anti-Francesco cabal and the headquarters of an elaborate system of paid spies and toadies.
In September 1571, Francesco issued a decree which ennobled the family of Bianca’s husband, and Ser Zenobio, unambitious, pottering notary that he was, and Pietro, and all their male kith and kin, were enrolled “inter nobiles, inter agnationes et familias ceusetas et connumeratus.” Pietro was now a gentleman of Florence, and he at once assumed the airs of such, as he conceived they should be, but his bad manners and his arrogance brought upon him the contempt of the whole Court.
Francesco at first shielded his protégé, but his overbearing conduct and his importunities at length alienated his regard, and he made no attempt to conceal his displeasure. Bianca pleaded with her husband in vain, success had turned his head, and now came “the parting of the ways.”
Pietro had consented that Bianca should be “La cosa di Francesco”; he too would enjoy life, and he sought his compensation in the embraces of the most attractive and most scheming flirt in Florence, Madonna Cassandra, the wealthy widow of Messer Simone de’ Borghiani—born a Riccio. Although well over thirty years of age, she was run after by all the young gallants of the Court and city. Two already had been done to death for love of her—mere boys—Pietro del Calca and Giovanni de’ Cavalcanti.
Pietro Buonaventuri vowed he would marry her, but the Ricci would have none of him; and he fell, one summer’s night, under the very windows of his wife’s bedchamber, pierced with twenty-five savage dagger thrusts. That same night—it was 27th August 1572—Madonna Cassandra was stabbed, in her own apartment, also twenty-five times, and two stark, mutilated corpses were mercifully borne away, in the dawn, by the brethren of the Misericordia, and given burial.
Bianca, widowed, demanded at the hand of her princely lover justice for the spilling of her husband’s blood; but, for answer, Francesco drew her gently to his heart and said: “The best thing I can do now, my own Bianca, is to make you, before long, Grand Duchess of Tuscany!”
The Cardinal was keenly interested in this tragedy, not indeed that he took any part therein, but it had a distinct bearing upon his line of conduct, and he noted with apprehension the redoubling of Francesco’s devotion to “the hated Venetian.”
Bianca, of course, was perfectly aware that she was the real cause of Ferdinando’s animosity, in spite of his protestations of admiration and the like. She set about to unmask his real intentions and to circumvent his hypocrisy. Her methods were at once original and full of tact, for she disarmed his aggression by playing to his personal vanity and by furthering his lust for money.
Not once, nor twice, but many times, did Bianca plead with Francesco for his brother, and always with success, and many a substantial sum of money was lodged in the Roman Medici bank at his disposal. Ferdinando began to realise that the only way to his brother’s purse was by Bianca’s favour, and he began to evince a distinctly amiable spirit in his relations with her.
As marking the improvement in the situation, the Cardinal accepted an invitation to a family gathering at Poggio a Caiano in the autumn of 1575. The Grand Duchess Giovanna quite properly was the hostess, but Bianca Buonaventuri, who was installed in a Casino in the park, which Francesco had given her, and called “Villetta Bini,” was of the party, the life and soul of all the entertainments.
During the festivities Bianca managed to be tête-à-tête with her brother-in-law in a secluded summer-house. The fascination of three years before was again transcendent. “The Venetian is irresistible,” he said afterwards, “I cannot hate her, try how I will!” The truth was, he was madly in love, and he owned it, but his love was, after all, like the hot fumes of a lurid fire.
The year 1576 was a black one in the annals of the Medici. Two beautiful and accomplished princesses of the ruling house were done to death by jealous, unfaithful husbands.
Bianca Buonaventuri was stunned by the terrible end of her dear sister-friends, Isabella de’ Medici and Eleanora de Garzia de Toledo. Would her turn come next? The three had been called “The Three Graces of Florence,” and certainly each had vied with the other in elegance and fascination, but to Bianca the golden apple had been accorded unanimously. Beauty and charm seemed to be magnets of destruction, and Bianca was upon her guard!
So far as she herself was concerned, she knew that at any time she might still fall a victim to a Venetian desperado, or to a Florentine assassin, and under every friendly guise she feared a foe.
With respect to the Grand Duchess Giovanna and her detestation of Bianca, a story may be told which has all the appearance at least of probability. Giovanna expressed, not once, but often, her wish for Bianca’s death. This, indeed, in those days, and in Florence, the “City of Assassins,” was as good as a judicial sentence. The Grand Duchess, moreover, it was reputed, followed up her words by action. “One day,” the story goes, “in the month of March 1576, her carriage chanced to meet that of Bianca’s upon the Ponte SS. Trinita. She besought her coachman to try and upset her rival, hoping that she might fall into the river below and be drowned! Conte Eliodoro del Castello, her Chamberlain, saw the manoeuvre and prevented a deplorable fatality.”
Be this as it may, the Grand Duke not only sympathised with Bianca’s fears, but appointed certain of his own bodyguard to take up similar duties near the person of Madonna Buonaventuri, and her progresses henceforward were watched with as much circumstance as his own. At the same time his devotion to the woman he loved increased from day to day. The perils she was called upon to meet were incurred through her unquestioning love of him. This he knew well enough.
Writing on 29th March 1576, Carlo Zorzi, the Ambassador of the Serene Republic, and a warm adherent of his fascinating fellow-countrywoman, says: “I visited the Grand Duke’s Villa Pratolino, and also Madonna Bianca Buonaventuri’s charming retreat, the Orte Oricellari, and her pretty Villa della Tana, which he had lately given her, looking upon the Arno, and I observed Don Francesco’s intimacy with the Madonna. I noted also her extraordinary influence for good upon him.... They appear to be made for one another, and to be absorbed in the same occupations and interests.... She had but to name an object for charity or patronage, and at once she had his hearty approval.”
Francesco never concealed his concern at having no son. With his own physicians and the physicians of the Grand Duchess he held many consultations: not a few quacks and empirics also were sought to for nostrums and charms which should obtain by science what nature had so far withheld. He and Bianca held anxious counsel, for he knew that she would lay down her life for him, and would grant him every facility which it was in her loving power to supply.
Reflecting deeply, Bianca saw only one situation: Giovanna was barren of male issue, why should not she herself become once more a mother—the mother of a son, a son of Francesco!
This idea haunted her, but all the same she had no conception; and then a design presented itself to her weary brain—as natural as it was indefensible. For some time she had been getting stout—her age, her constitution, and her rich living were all conducive to that condition. If she was not to be the mother of his child by natural means, she could be so by a subterfuge, which her embonpoint would uphold!
In the spring of 1576 Bianca Buonaventuri gave out that she was enceinte and began forthwith her preparations for accouchement. She left her palace in the Via Maggio, under the shadow of the Pitti Palace, and took up her abode in the Casino of the Orte Oricellari, which she had lately purchased from the family of Rucellai, and surrounded herself with confidential friends and attendants.
The dénouement came on 29th August, when the Grand Duke was informed by Bianca’s surgeon-accoucheur, that she had been delivered of a child—a boy! Francesco was almost frantic with delight, and he hastened to his beloved Bianca’s bedside. Picking up his child, he fondled him tenderly and almost smothered him with kisses, and at once gave orders for a ceremonial baptism. Antonio, he called him—after the kindly patron saint of that auspicious day—when he personally handed the child to the Archbishop at the font.
The Grand Duchess was inexpressibly shocked, she refused to see her husband, shut herself up in her own apartments, and demanded an escort to Vienna! The news was not long in reaching Rome, and it made Cardinal Ferdinando furious. In a moment all the blandishments of “the Venetian” were dissipated; the better terms lately established in Florence were renounced, and the angry Prince, in unmeasured language, asserted that the child was not Francesco’s.
He knew well enough that what had come to pass, unless unchallenged, would imperil his presumptive title. First it was sought to throw doubt upon Bianca’s actual maternity, and next to secure the person of the little boy.
Bianca and Antonio, under a strong guard, were sent off to Pratolino, hers and Francesco’s best-loved retreat—they had together planned its beauties. There, during her make-believe convalescence, she came to consider the very serious nature of her love’s stratagem, and she determined to make a full confession to her lover. The Grand Duke was thunderstruck, but at once he recognised the emphatic importance of secrecy; for, as Vincenzio Borghini quaintly said: “Florence was the greatest market in the world for tissues and materials of all kinds, and full of evil eyes, and ears, and tongues!” Meanwhile Ferdinando had not let the water run under the Arno bridges for nothing. He discovered the surgeon-accoucheur who had attended Madonna Bianca—one Giovanni Gazzi. He maintained the fact of the confinement, but incidentally named the wet nurse, Giovanna Santi. This woman admitted that she had been instrumental in the introduction into Madonna Bianca’s chamber of the newly-born son of a reputable woman, who lived with her husband behind the Stinche.
No trace could be found of these humble parents of Francesco’s supposititious child, and all Ferdinando’s enquiries were fruitless. Many were the tales rife, in and out of the palaces and markets, but neither the Grand Duke nor Bianca took any steps to refute them, and after being, as usual, a nine days’ wonder, the subject dropped, apparently.
The Grand Duchess Giovanna gave birth, on 19th May, the following year, to a son—a sickly child to be sure, but the undoubted heir of his father. Ferdinando’s hopes were shattered, but he had not done with Bianca Buonaventuri. Within nine months, on 9th February, Giovanna died, somewhat suddenly, and the Cardinal failed not to intimate that Bianca was the cause thereof, and to name poison as her means! The truth is, that the Grand Duchess one day getting out of her sedan-chair, slipped upon the polished marble floor, and, being again near her confinement, a miscarriage resulted, from which she never recovered.
Within two months of the burial of sour-tempered, unlovable Giovanna, the Grand Duke married Bianca, Pietro Buonaventuri’s widow, privately in the chapel of the Palazzo Vecchio.
One immediate result of this marriage was the quasi-legitimisation of the child Antonio—a vigorous youngster and certain to outlive frail little Filippo.
Reconciliation with Venice, public marriage, and Coronation were in due order celebrated, and Bianca Cappello, “the true and undoubted daughter of Venice,” was enthroned in the Duomo, as the true and lawful Grand Duchess of Tuscany! Cardinal Ferdinando watched all these ceremonials from afar—the only one of his family who declined to honour the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess with his presence during the festivities.
Represented by an inferior official of his household, he remained in Rome, closely shut up in his palace, a spectacle to the world at large of ungovernable prejudice and foiled ambition. His cogitations, however, were very grateful, for he was working out in his intriguing brain a ready method for ridding himself, not alone of the two children, bars to his pretensions, but of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess also! Ferdinando was determined to succeed Francesco as Sovereign of Tuscany, come what might!
Never was a man more changed than the Grand Duke Francesco when he placed the new Grand Duchess beside him on his throne. Twelve years of gloom and disappointment gave way before the advent of the “Sun of Venice.”
The best, happiest, and most popular years of his reign exactly synchronise with the period of Bianca’s ascendency. No strife of parties, no pestilence, no foreign war, black-marked those years. Arts and crafts revived with the increase of population and of confidence, and men began to agree that there was something after all to be said—and to be said heartily—for Macchiavelli’s “Prince,” and his idea of a “Il Governo d’un solo.”
In this glorious eventide of the Renaissance were reproduced some of the magnificence of its heyday, under Lucrezia and Lorenzo de’ Medici.
In the early days of Francesco’s infatuation for Bianca he had given forth an impassioned madrigal, which once more he sang to her as his good angel-guardian:—
Francesco’s devotion for Bianca continued as the years sped on their way, and he noted with supreme satisfaction that every word and action of hers were marked with unquestioning affection. The loves of Francesco and Bianca at Pratolino recalled those of Giuliano and Simonetta at Fiesole, whilst the wits, and beaux, and beauteous women who consorted there, revived the glories of the Platonic Academy.
Montaigne, who visited the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, both at the Pitti Palace and at Pratolino, in 1580, says: “I was surprised to see her take the place of honour above her husband.... She is very handsome ... and seems to have entirely subjugated the Prince.”
The Cardinal was not unobservant of the trend of Florentine affairs. Plots and counterplots were quite to his liking. The Pucci conspiracy and the vengeance upon the Capponi affected him closely. Francesco was not ignorant of the patronage and encouragement vouchsafed to his secret enemies by his eminent brother in Rome—and he watched each move.
The peace and prosperity which marked the progress of the “City of the Lion and the Lily,” after Bianca Buonaventuri mounted the Grand Ducal throne, were not regarded complacently by the uneasy Cardinal. The very fact that she was the admirable cause thereof, embittered his Eminence’s soul, and his spleen was mightily enlarged by the creatures who pandered to his vicious ill-nature. The fascination of the Goddess engendered detestation as love was turned once more to hate in the crucible of his passions.
“She is nothing but a strumpet, and without a drop of royal blood,” so he reasoned, and so he spoke; and he backed up his aphorism by conniving at the foul report in 1582, which accused “Bianca Buonaventuri”—as he always styled her—of causing poison to be administered to poor little Filippo—Giovanna’s puny, sickly child! He even had the audacity to accuse Francesco of complicity, because he had ordered no elaborate court mourning, conveniently ignoring the fact that a gracious compliment was paid to Spanish custom and court etiquette, by the simplicity of the obsequies.
Plotters of other men’s wrongs were ever inconsistent! One would have thought that Ferdinando would have hailed the removal of the only legitimate heir, before himself, to the Grand Duchy, but the delirium of jealousy and the fury of animosity in the Cardinal’s evil heart, found a sort of culmination two years later. Bianca’s daughter, Pellegrina, the only offspring of Pietro Buonaventuri, gave birth to a child. She had married, shortly after the public nuptials of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess, Count Ulisse Bentivoglio di Magiola of Bologna—a by no means happy marriage as it turned out. This child, a boy, their first-born—indeed poor, pretty Pellegrina’s love-child—the Cardinal affirmed “Bianca Buonaventuri” had tried to pass off as her own—another subterfuge confirmative of the first, and that his brother was conversant with the intrigue!
The Grand Duke met the gossip with impassive silence—the wisest thing he could have done—and the Grand Duchess laid herself out to make Cardinal Ferdinando utterly ashamed of himself and his foul aspersions. The integrity of her conduct, and Francesco’s sapient conduct of the Government were the admiration of all Italy.
So struck was the Pope with the peace and happiness of the Medicean rule, and the personal characteristics of “the good wife and beneficent consort,” as he styled her, that he bestowed upon the Grand Duchess the rare distinction of the “Golden Rose”! At first his Holiness desired the Cardinal de’ Medici to head the special mission as Legate, and talked seriously to his Eminence upon his relations with the Sovereigns of Tuscany. He pointed out quite clearly the line of conduct Ferdinando should pursue—the direct converse of the position he had taken up.
The Cardinal began to reflect that the death of little Prince Filippo, and the fact that Francesco had not proclaimed Antonio his heir-apparent, left him at all events the undoubted heir-presumptive. Consequently, when the Florentine Mission, under Archbishop Giuseppe Donzelle of Sorrento, returned to Rome, and the Legate conveyed to him a cordial invitation from the Tuscan Sovereigns to visit Florence, he accepted it with the best grace he could command—keeping, at the same time, his true feelings and intentions to himself.
Pageant and dirge trip up each other often enough in the course of human life! The lives especially of sovereigns, through the strong light ever beating upon their thrones, are always exposed to vicissitudes of fortune. The Papal Mission had scarcely passed out of recollection, and everything in Florence was happy and prosperous—sunshine is always brightest before eclipse—when the spectre of tragedy again cast its dark shadow over the path of the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess.
A right merry party was that which set off from the Palazzo Pitti to the Villa Poggio a Caiano one bright morning in October 1587. The “hunter’s moon was up,” for the harvest had been gathered in, and the new luscious grapes were in the vat. Pheasant awaited the coming of the sportsmen in the home-coppices, wild boar in the thickets of Monte Ginestra, and other game was ready for the hawk-on-wrist and the dog-in-leash along the smiling valley of the Ombrone.
Hunting and sporting parties were now quite in the Grand Duchess’ way. Unused to such exploits upon the canals and lagunes of Venice, she had, from the moment of her elevation, sympathetically entered into the joys of horsemanship and the pastimes of the countryside. Few could beat her in point-to-point—she feared no obstacle, nor dreaded accident, the charge of wild game terrified her not.
“Magnificent,” she wrote, on 15th November 1586, “was the sport.... I actually saw four very large boars fall dead at my feet.” The Grand Duke, of course, as became “a perfect gentleman,” was at one with Bianca in love for, and skill in, all exercises in the open air. His seat was firm, his aim was good, and he revelled in the chase.
Still of Poggio a Caiano he had unpleasing memories, for there he met Giovanna of Austria, and had the first taste of her ill-humour as he rode by her side at her scornful entry into Florence, twelve years before. But Bianca had wrought a vast change in his disposition and environment. She had interwoven fancy and reality, and Francesco was now serenely happy. Often did he sing tender madrigals as they together sauntered in the woods and indulged in pastoral pursuits.