Under all circumstances, this accusation was most unfortunate and ill-judged, and should in itself have sufficed to open the eyes of the monarch, who had, assuredly, had sufficient experience in female tactics to be quite aware that where a woman is compelled mentally to condemn herself, she is the most anxious to transfer her fault to others, and to blame where she is conscious of being open to censure.  Madame de Verneuil had not, however, in this instance at all miscalculated the extent of her influence over the royal mind; as, instead of resenting an impertinence which was well fitted to arouse his indignation, Henry weakly condescended to justify himself, and by this unmanly concession laid the foundation of all his subsequent domestic discomfort.

Madame de Verneuil returned to Paris, surrounded by adulation and splendour, and the King was left at liberty to bestow some portion of his thoughts upon his expected bride.  It is probable, indeed, that the portrait of Marie presented to him by the Grand Duchess had excited his curiosity and flattered his self-love; for it was more than sufficiently attractive to command the attention of a monarch even less susceptible to female beauty than himself.  Marie was still in the very bloom of life, having only just attained her twenty-fourth year; nor could the King have forgotten that when, some time previously, her portrait had been forwarded to the French Court together with that of the Spanish Infanta, Gabrielle d’Estrees, then in the full splendour of her own surpassing loveliness, had exclaimed as she examined them:  “I should fear nothing from the Spaniard, but the Florentine is dangerous.”  From whatever impulse he might act, however, it is certain that after the departure of the favourite, Henry publicly expressed his perfect satisfaction with the marriage which he had been induced to contract,[97] and lost no time in issuing his commands for the reception of his expected bride.

The Duc de Bellegarde, Grand Equerry of France, had reached Livorno on the 20th of September, accompanied by forty French nobles, all alike eager, by the magnificence of their appearance and the chivalry of their deportment, to uphold the honour of their royal master.  Seven days subsequently, he entered Florence, where he delivered his credentials to the Grand Duke, having been previously joined by Antonio de Medicis with a great train of Florentine cavaliers who had been sent to meet him; and the same evening he had an interview with his new sovereign, to whom he presented the letters with which he had been entrusted by the King.[98]