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.