On the 4th of October, the Cardinal Aldobrandini, the nephew and legate of the Pope, who had already been preceded by the Duke of Mantua and the Venetian Ambassador, arrived in his turn at Florence, in order to perform the ceremony of the royal marriage.  His Eminence was received at the gate of the city by the Grand Duke in person, and made his entry on horseback under a canopy supported by eight young Florentine nobles, preceded by all the ecclesiastical and secular bodies; while immediately behind him followed sixteen prelates, and fifty gentlemen of the first families in the duchy bearing halberds.  On reaching the church, the Cardinal dismounted, and thence, after a brief prayer, he proceeded to the ducal palace.  At the conclusion of the magnificent repast which awaited him, the legate, in the presence of his royal host, of the Dukes of Mantua and Bracciano, the Princes Juan and Antonio de Medicis, and the Sieur de Bellegarde, announced to the young Queen the entire satisfaction of the Sovereign-Pontiff at the union upon which he was about to pronounce a blessing:  to which assurance she replied with grace and dignity.

On the morrow a high mass was celebrated by the Cardinal in the presence of the whole Court; and during its solemnization he was seated under a canopy of cloth of gold at the right-hand side of the altar, where a chair had been prepared for him upon a platform raised three steps above the floor.  He had no sooner taken his place, than the Duc de Bellegarde, approaching the Princess (who occupied a similar seat of honour, together with her uncle, at the opposite side of the shrine), led her to the right hand of the legate; the Grand Duke at the same time placing himself upon his left, and presenting to his Eminence the procuration by which he was authorized to espouse his niece in the name of the King.  The document was then transferred to two of the attendant prelates, by whom it was read aloud; and subsequently the authority given by the Pope for the solemnization of the marriage was, in like manner, made public.  The remainder of the nuptial service was then performed amid perpetual salvos of artillery.  In the evening a splendid ball took place at the palace, followed by a banquet, at which the new Queen occupied the upper seat, having on her right the legate of his Holiness, the Duke of Mantua, and the Grand Duke her uncle, who, in homage to her superior rank, ceded to her the place of honour; and on her left, the Duchesses of Mantua, Tuscany, and Bracciano; the Duke of Bracciano acting as equerry, and Don Juan, the brother of the Grand Duke, as cup-bearer.

The four following days were passed in a succession of festivities:  hunting-parties, jousts, tiltings at the ring, racing, and every other description of manly sport occupying the hours of daylight, while the nights were devoted to balls and ballets, in which the Florentine nobility vied with their foreign visitors in every species of profusion and magnificence.  Among other amusements, a comedy in five acts was represented, on which the outlay was stated to have amounted to the enormous sum of sixty thousand crowns.