Created General and Marquis by the Emperor, the young commander returned to Rome in 1537, and took up his position as the acknowledged head of his family.  He married Francesca, daughter of Bosso Sforza, heiress of the Counts of Anguillaria.  Three sons and a daughter were born to them.

Paolo Giordano, born 1539, was adopted by his maternal uncle, Carlo, Cardinal Sforza da Santa Fiora, and became a protege of Paul IV.  Following his father’s profession of arms, he saw military service in Spain, but was recalled to Rome by the death of both his parents.  On succession to the family estates the Pope created the Lordship of Bracciano a Duchy, and sent a message to Duke Cosimo, commending the young soldier to his notice, and suggesting a matrimonial alliance with one of his daughters.

Cosimo looked with favour upon the Pope’s proposition, and asked the young Duke to pay the Florentine Court a visit.  The young people seemed made for one another:  he was handsome, brave and rich, she was beautiful, talented, and lovable.  Perhaps it was a case of love at first sight, anyhow they were betrothed in 1555, with the proviso that the nuptial knot should not be tied until Isabella had attained her sixteenth year.

In due course the marriage-contract was drawn up, signed and sealed, but it contained a condition which was as unnatural as it was impolitic.  Duke Cosimo insisted that his dearly-beloved daughter should make his house her home for at least six months each year, and only pay occasional visits to her husband’s palace in Rome!  Duke Paolo, quite rightly, resented this questionable arrangement, and only agreed at last on pressure from the Pope.

Whatever made Cosimo take such a weird course no one can really say, although horrible rumours were indeed rife in Florence about the relations between father and child!  It was, however, a fatal bar to all marital happiness, and led to the one and only possible denouement—­tragedy.  Certainly the Duke bestowed upon the young couple the splendid estate and villa of the Baroncelli, which had come into his hands, and which he enlarged and surrounded with a park.  He added a munificent endowment and had the villa refurnished and redecorated throughout, according to his son-in-law’s wishes.

The marriage was celebrated on 3rd September 1558 in the private chapel of the Pitti Palace,—­a Saturday, always considered, in Florence, an unlucky day for a wedding,—­a few months after that of Prince Alfonso d’Este’s to Isabella’s younger sister—­Lucrezia.  After a brief honeymoon spent at their villa the youthful bride and bridegroom separated—­an ominous repetition of a fateful error.  Truth to tell, Duke Paolo took an intense dislike to his father-in-law:  he distrusted him both in relation to his affection for Isabella, and also with respect to his tyrannical character generally.  Florence also and the Florentines were distasteful in their excesses of ill-living, cruelty, and chicanery—­not that the Court of Rome was a Paradise, or the young man a St Anthony!