It was woman’s wit which now untied the knot twisted about the young man’s throat.  The Duchess Giovanna has, by some, been credited with the origination of the tactful expedient, but some say Bianca Buonaventuri was its inspiratrix.  Anyhow, the solution came in a form agreeable to all parties concerned, namely, the full pardon of the criminal—­on condition of his immediate marriage with Eleanora degli Albizzi!

Carlo de’ Panciatichi was thus made the scapegoat for Duke Cosimo’s intrigue.  The sentence of the Otto was quashed by the payment by the Duke of the heavy fine imposed in the first case; and in response to Duke Francesco’s request, the charge of contempt was withdrawn.  Neither Carlo nor Eleanora were consulted in the matter, but she was laden with costly presents by Duke Cosimo, and ten thousand gold florins found their way into Carlo’s empty pockets!

This timely arrangement was made on 20th July, and Carlo and Eleanora became man and wife the following month.  Duke Cosimo on the same day caused little Giovanni to be legitimatised, and he was entered in the Register of Baptisms as “Giovanni de’ Medici, undoubted son of Cosimo I. Duke of Florence and Siena.”  An ample provision was made for the child’s maintenance by the Duke, and Carlo de’ Panciatichi agreed to his being an inmate in his house along with his mother.

The marriage was celebrated privately in the presence of the two Dukes, in the chapel of the Pitti Palace, and the young couple at once took up their residence at the Panciatichi Palace in the Via Larga.  Upon Carlo was conferred the order of “Knight of San Stefano,” and Messer Bartolommeo, his father, was enrolled as a senator for life.

It would appear that Eleanora abandoned herself to her new life with exemplary fortitude and resignation.  She certainly had exchanged “new lamps for old,” and she made the best of an honourable marriage, in spite of the violent and arrogant manner of her husband, whose fame as a violent braggadocio was a safeguard against the advances of young Piero de’ Medici.  Three years after the marriage a child was born, to whom the name of Cosimo was given, a laconic compliment to the old libertine!  A second son appeared in 1571, Bartolommeo, but he died within a twelvemonth of his birth, and then, in 1577, came a third child to the Panciatichi mansion, another Bartolommeo, so Eleanora decreed.  This boy, however, brought with him ineffaceable trouble, for Cavaliere Carlo refused to acknowledge him, and angrily pointed to Don Piero de’ Medici as his putative father!

Piero made light of this charge—­he was well used to that sort of thing, but, with rare effrontery, he held the infant at the font, whilst Panciatichi absented himself, and Eleanora made a tacit avowal of his parentage.  The relations between Carlo and his wife had quite naturally never been of the best, and as gradually fears of death, upon the scaffold faded, or by a retributive d’Antonio hand, and he found himself the untrammelled master of his actions, he began to resent the callousness of the arrangement with Duke Cosimo, after 1570, Grand Duke of Tuscany.