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.