Moreover, Henry hinted not only at the advisability of separating the too youthful couple, and of giving the Prince military employment until his young wife attained a more mature age; but suggested that some way should be found, even at the eleventh hour, of allying Alfonso to a French princess.

Nevertheless, Alfonso claimed his Florentine bride, whilst Lucrezia appears to have conceived an attachment for the warlike young Prince, who caused a courier to inform his father that the Princess “seemed to like” him.  Duke Ercole replied as follows:  “I am much pleased that your bride is satisfied with you.  I would rather have heard your own state of mind in regard to the matter....”

Letters to the Duke from the chief members of the Prince’s suite assured him that the Prince really fell in love with the Princess at first sight, but there is no word of Alfonso’s extant which shows that he cared in the least for the bride State policy had assigned for him.

Duchess Eleanora was exceedingly provoked by the young Prince’s demeanour and his insistence upon the observance of the unnatural condition.  Moreover, she protested to the Duke her wish that the marriage might at least be postponed, pointing out, with a woman’s intuition of trouble, that no good could come out of such an uncanny arrangement.

She, of course, was Spanish, and she seems to have forgotten that French blood flowed in Alfonso’s veins—­his mother, Duchess Renata, or Renea, being a daughter of Louis XII.  Duke Ercole added to the trouble by deeply wounding the Duchess’ susceptibilities with a suggestion that the young bride should be sent to Ferrara, immediately after the nuptial ceremony, under the care of chosen proxies for his son.

Haughtily she answered the Duke’s representative:  “A married daughter of the Medici, and of Spain, remains at her parents’ palace until her husband, and no one else, takes her away.”

The day fixed for the marriage was 3rd July—­a Sunday—­and the wedding Mass was celebrated in the private chapel of the Palazzo Pitti, by the Bishop of Cortona.  One hundred and one comely Florentine gentlewomen formed a beauteous guard of honour for the bride, each arrayed splendidly in silk brocade and covered with costly jewels.  As many young nobles, with the accompaniment of music and dancing, performed a gorgeous pageant of Greeks, Indians and Florentines.  In the Piazzo di Santa Maria Novella a State exhibition of the popular Florentine game of Il Calcio (football), was given by sixty of the best-looking and most noble youths, attired in cloths of gold and silver.

The bride and bridegroom retired late at night to the Palazzo Medici in the Via Larga, set in order for them, but, on the third day, Prince Alfonso, as good as his word, set off for France!  Don Francesco, Lucrezia’s eldest brother, accompanied him as far as Scarperia, on the Bologna road, and there bade him a not too friendly farewell.  The young man had made a very bad impression in Florence; he had kept himself entirely to himself, and had gone through his part of the ceremonials like a puppet.