to him by the Grand Duchess had excited his curiosity and flattered his self-love; for it was more than sufficiently attractive to command the attention of a monarch even less susceptible to female beauty than himself. Marie was still in the very bloom of life, having only just attained her twenty-fourth year; nor could the King have forgotten that when, some time previously, her portrait had been forwarded to the French Court together with that of the Spanish Infanta, Gabrielle d'Estrées, then in the full splendour of her own surpassing loveliness, had exclaimed as she examined them: "I should fear nothing from the Spaniard, but the Florentine is dangerous." From whatever impulse he might act, however, it is certain that after the departure of the favourite, Henry publicly expressed his perfect satisfaction with the marriage which he had been induced to contract,[97] and lost no time in issuing his commands for the reception of his expected bride.
The Duc de Bellegarde, Grand Equerry of France, had reached Livorno on the 20th of September, accompanied by forty French nobles, all alike eager, by the magnificence of their appearance and the chivalry of their deportment, to uphold the honour of their royal master. Seven days subsequently, he entered Florence, where he delivered his credentials to the Grand Duke, having been previously joined by Antonio de Medicis with a great train of Florentine cavaliers who had been sent to meet him; and the same evening he had an interview with his new sovereign, to whom he presented the letters with which he had been entrusted by the King.[98]
On the 4th of October, the Cardinal Aldobrandini, the nephew and legate of the Pope, who had already been preceded by the Duke of Mantua and the Venetian Ambassador, arrived in his turn at Florence, in order to perform the ceremony of the royal marriage. His Eminence was received at the gate of the city by the Grand Duke in person, and made his entry on horseback under a canopy supported by eight young Florentine nobles, preceded by all the ecclesiastical and secular bodies; while immediately behind him followed sixteen prelates, and fifty gentlemen of the first families in the duchy bearing halberds. On reaching the church, the Cardinal dismounted, and thence, after a brief prayer, he proceeded to the ducal palace. At the conclusion of the magnificent repast which awaited him, the legate, in the presence of his royal host, of the Dukes of Mantua and Bracciano, the Princes Juan and Antonio de Medicis, and the Sieur de Bellegarde, announced to the young Queen the entire satisfaction of the Sovereign-Pontiff at the union upon which he was about to pronounce a blessing: to which assurance she replied with grace and dignity.
On the morrow a high mass was celebrated by the Cardinal in the presence of the whole Court; and during its solemnization he was seated under a canopy of cloth of gold at the right-hand side of the altar, where a chair had been prepared for him upon a platform raised three steps above the floor. He had no sooner taken his place, than the Duc de Bellegarde, approaching the Princess (who occupied a similar seat of honour, together with her uncle, at the opposite side of the shrine), led her to the right hand of the legate; the Grand Duke at the same time placing himself upon his left, and presenting to his Eminence the procuration by which he was authorized to espouse his niece in the name of the King. The document was then transferred to two of the attendant prelates, by whom it was read aloud; and subsequently the authority given by the Pope for the solemnization of the marriage was, in like manner, made public. The remainder of the nuptial service was then performed amid perpetual salvos of artillery. In the evening a splendid ball took place at the palace, followed by a banquet, at which the new Queen occupied the upper seat, having on her right the legate of his Holiness, the Duke of Mantua, and the Grand Duke her uncle, who, in homage to her superior rank, ceded to her the place of honour; and on her left, the Duchesses of Mantua, Tuscany, and Bracciano; the Duke of Bracciano acting as equerry, and Don Juan, the brother of the Grand Duke, as cup-bearer.
The four following days were passed in a succession of festivities: hunting-parties, jousts, tiltings at the ring, racing, and every other description of manly sport occupying the hours of daylight, while the nights were devoted to balls and ballets, in which the Florentine nobility vied with their foreign visitors in every species of profusion and magnificence. Among other amusements, a comedy in five acts was represented, on which the outlay was stated to have amounted to the enormous sum of sixty thousand crowns.
At the close of the Court festivals, the Cardinal Aldobrandini took his leave of the distinguished party, and proceeded to Chambéry; but the Queen lingered with her family until the 13th of the month, upon which day, accompanied by the Grand-Duchess her aunt, the Duchess of Mantua her sister, her brother Don Antonio, the Duke of Bracciano, and the French Ambassador, she set forth upon her journey to her new kingdom.[99]
Without being strictly beautiful, Marie de Medicis possessed a person at once pleasing and dignified. All the pride of her Italian blood flashed from her large dark eye, while the consciousness of her exalted rank lent a majesty to her deportment which occasionally, however, in moments of irritation, degenerated into haughtiness. Her intellect was quick and cultivated, but she was deficient alike in depth of judgment and in strength of character. Amiable, and even submissive in her intercourse with her favourites, she was vindictive and tyrannical towards those who fell under the ban of her displeasure; and with all the unscrupulous love of intrigue common to her race, she was nevertheless unguarded in her confidences, unstable in her purposes, and short-sighted in her policy. In temper she was hot, impatient, and irascible; in temperament, jealous and exacting; while her vanity and love of power perpetually made her the tool of those who sought to profit by her defects.
It is probable that throughout the whole of Europe no princess could have been selected less constituted to make the happiness of a sovereign who, like Henri IV, had not scrupled to avow to his minister that he dreaded domestic dissension far more than foreign warfare; but who at the same time did not hesitate, by his own irregularities, to arouse all the worst passions in the bosom of an outraged wife.
On the 17th of October the royal bride reached Livorno, where she made her entry in great pomp, and was received with the most enthusiastic acclamations; and on the following day she embarked in the state-galley of the Grand-Duke, one of the most magnificent vessels which had ever floated upon the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Seventy feet in length, it was impelled by fifty-four oars, and was richly gilded from stem to stern; the borders of the poop being inlaid with a profusion of lapis-lazuli, mother-of-pearl, ivory, and ebony. It was, moreover, ornamented by twenty large circles of iron interlaced, and studded with topaz, emeralds, pearls, and other precious stones; while the splendour of the interior perfectly corresponded with this gorgeous framework. In the principal cabin, which was hung and carpeted with cloth of gold, a seat of state had been arranged for the Queen, opposite to which were suspended the shields of France and of the house of Medicis side by side; the fleurs-de-lis of the former being composed of large diamonds, and the device of the latter represented by five immense rubies and a sapphire, with an enormous pearl above, and a fine emerald in the centre.[100] This fairy vessel was followed by five other galleys furnished by the Pope, and six appertaining to the Grand Duke; and thus escorted Marie de Medicis reached Malta, where she was joined by another fleet which awaited her off that island; but, despite all this magnificence, the voyage of the Queen was anything but propitious, for after arriving at Esperies, where the authorities of Genoa profferred to her, with great respect, the attendance of their own flotilla, she had no sooner reached Portofino than she was compelled to anchor for several days from stress of weather. Unaccustomed as she was, however, to this mode of travelling, the high-spirited young Queen resisted all the entreaties of those about her, who were anxious that she should land until the wind had moderated, simply remarking that the King had given no directions to that effect;[101] and retaining, amid all the dismay and discomfort by which she was surrounded, not only her self-command, but even her cheerfulness.[102]
Meanwhile, Henry had no sooner ascertained the approach of his royal bride, than he forthwith despatched to welcome her, the Constable, the Chancellor, and the Dues de Nemours, de Ventadour, and de Guise; and these princes were followed on the ensuing day by the Cardinals de Joyeuse, de Gondy, and de Sourdis; after which he intimated his pleasure to all the several princesses and great ladies of the Court who were then sojourning at Grenoble in order to be near the royal army, that they should immediately set forth to pay their respects to their new
