The pretty version of the story;—and the true version of the same.—Saint Mark's Square at Florence.—Bianca's beauty.—The Medici en famille.—The Casino of St. Mark.—The Proprieties.—"Cosa di Francesco."

In one of the twelve million volumes[140] of the Archives of Venice, preserved in the two hundred and ninety–eight rooms of the suppressed convent of St. Maria dei Frari, there is one pointed out to our notice by the learned and accurate Emmanuele[141] Cigogna, in which certain passages have been blotted out; and in the margin opposite to them are written, in clerk's Latin, the words, "Obliterated by order of the Council of Ten." The volume in question is a register of criminal processes before the court of the "Avvogaria" for the year 1563. But the "Avvogadori" (members of one of the numerous magistracies of Venice, whose attributions were partly those of police magistrates, and partly such as belong to a public prosecutor), in obeying the commands of "The Ten," did not reckon on the lynx–eyed curiosity of modern peerers into the secrets of the past. "As this obliteration," says Signor Cigogna, "was not effected by the knife, but only by drawing a pen with a different ink over the lines, the passages scratched out have been very clearly decyphered by the skill and sharp eyes of Signor Marco Solari, the paleographer." And the secret, which the terrible "Ten" thought to hide for evermore, thus divulged, and stripped of its clerk's Latin dress, is to this effect.

"Whereas Pietro Bonaventuri of Florence, resident in this city with his uncle Giovanni Batista Bonaventuri, close to the church of St. Apollinore, hath been accused before the criminal court of the Forty; that with audacious insolence and disrespect for the nobles of Venice, he, knowing that Bianca, the daughter of Bartolommeo Cappello, was an heiress of no small fortune, and thinking that he could get possession of such property if he could in any way lead the girl astray—(si puellam ipsam aliqu ratione falleret)—dared to take her from the house of her father in the night following the 28th day of November, in the year 1563, having deceived her by many falsehoods, while she has barely completed her sixteenth year, and afterwards to take her with him from Venice, thus contaminating the race and house of a noble Venetian, in contempt of the laws, and against the public morals of this city; and whereas the said Pietro, notwithstanding diligent search, hath not been taken into custody, it is ordered, that if at any time he shall be arrested, he shall be brought to Venice, where, at the accustomed hour, on a lofty scaffold erected between the two columns on the piazza, his head shall be stricken from his shoulders by the public executioner, so that he die." Then follows the promise of a reward offered by Bartolommeo Cappello, the father, in addition to that promised by the government, to any one who will bring in the body of the culprit, alive or dead, or give satisfactory proof of having killed him anywhere beyond the territory of the republic. Another long judgment follows against those suspected of having aided the couple in their flight, and specially against a certain Maria Donati, "for that, being a serving–maid in the house of the noble gentleman, Bartolommeo Cappello, she perfidiously and audaciously dared, at the instance of Pietro Bonaventuri, to give him her aid[142] in seducing and enticing away Bianca, the daughter of the aforesaid Bartolommeo, so that she not only had intercourse with the aforesaid Peter, but fled away from her father's house and from Venice."

Further, a MS. chronicle of the time, cited by Cigogna,[143] states, "that Bianca left Venice under a disgracing ban, so that, if she returned, she would be put to death."

These judicial records are terribly unmanageable material in a biographer's hand. To think that a lynx–eyed paleographer, by poking out one volume among twelve million, and therein decyphering what was meant to be concealed for ever three hundred years ago, should have utterly spoiled for us the pretty romantic story, with which Bianca's adventures have generally been understood to commence. Romantic and despairing passion of the young Florentine banker's clerk, shot to the heart by glances darted across the narrow canal from the noble palace opposite;—(alas! the same detestable registers prove, that the Florentine bank in which Bonaventuri was employed was not opposite, but in a line with the Cappello palace, and out of glance–shot;)—chance meeting at matins; imprudent but innocent interviews at early dawn, with palace door left ajar to secure the means of timely return; unhappy stroke of destiny in the shape of the baker going his early rounds, and, thinking to do well, shutting fatally the half–open palace door, and cutting off all retreat from the unfortunate maiden thus forced by terror and despair to sudden and unpremeditated flight with her lover:—all knocked to the ground like a child's card house, by the interference of a lynx–eyed, dry–as–dust paleographer!

So the Florentine banker's clerk was a vulgar fortune–hunter, scheming to carry off an heiress! Bianca herself was not only "no better," as the classic phrase goes, but very perceptibly worse, "than she should have been!"—(another MS.[144] chronicle declares that, being motherless, and not very sharply looked after, she took to "freer habits of life than were usual among noble Venetian damsels"). The flight from Venice was a planned and got up thing, not unaccompanied, say some[145] authorities, by a carefully–selected trousseau of the family jewels; and the baker, unconscious, but fatal instrument in the hands of destiny, a myth!

All this pretty story, then, which shares with so many others still prettier, the misfortune of not being in accordance with fact, has to be regretfully abandoned. Regretfully also must be sacrificed all the detailed account of Bianca's journey with Bonaventuri to Florence, with various adventures on the road,—hiding at Ferrara, and narrow escape there from the secret emissaries of the republic, &c. &c., which adorns the more or less fictitious accounts of the matter, that have been written in great number upon the "romance of history" plan. All these things may have happened; but unhappily there is no authority for saying that they did so.

A poor fact–bound biographer, therefore, having due fear of Dryasdust before his eyes, finds himself obliged to shape his statement in this fashion.

One Pietro Bonaventuri, a young Florentine, employed in a Florentine bank at Venice, found the means of becoming acquainted with Bianca, the motherless daughter of the noble Bartolommeo Cappello, a young lady then in her sixteenth year, but already noted for conduct none of the strictest; and noted also as the heiress of a considerable fortune. Giving her falsely to understand, as there is reason to believe,[146] that he was a member of the great Salviati family, Bonaventuri induced her to accord him secret meetings, and continued this intercourse till Bianca found herself to be with child. The couple thereupon determined on a secret flight to Florence, there to be married. And they did accordingly leave Venice on the night of the 28th of November, 1563; and did succeed, notwithstanding condemnation to death and large rewards for their apprehension, in reaching Florence in safety.

That the journey was one of difficulty and danger, may also be asserted without fear of error; for the roadless Apennine had to be crossed; it was winter; and the sixteen–year–old fugitive was not in a condition to perform such travel safely. But we get no distinct sight of the pair, from the time of their flight on that 29th of November, till we find them married and lodged in comparative safety in the poor dwelling—"tugurio"—of the bridegroom's mother in the Piazza di San[147] Marco at Florence. In comparative, but by no means in absolute safety. For the Queen of the Adriatic had long arms, and, as treaties of extradition had not then come into use, it was a common practice for rulers to execute by the hand of a hired assassin in a foreign country, the sentence, which the culprit's flight made it impossible for them to carry out more regularly at home. Assassinations were extremely common then in the streets of Florence; and the "brave ones," whose trade it was to commit them, were not likely to neglect so good a job, as that commissioned by the "most Serene" Republic.

So Bianca and her husband had to keep themselves close prisoners in the little house in the square of St. Mark. She had found out by this time, that he was no Salviati, but a poor clerk, now without a clerkship. And he had found out, that he had calculated amiss on those six thousand crowns, which Bianca inherited from her mother, and which, according to the Venetian law–records, had been to him the maiden's chief attraction. For the Republic declared them to be confiscated! A state of things not calculated, it may be feared, to conduce to that mutual affection, which must have been so necessary to make their misfortunes, and imprisonment in the little "tugurio," endurable.

But while they were thus courting obscurity the story of their flight was making much noise in Italy. The abduction of a Venetian noble's heiress was a serious thing. All Venice felt the insult; and the reward for Bonaventuri's head was published in every city. It thus came to pass, that Francesco, Duke Cosmo's eldest son, the heir apparent to the throne of Tuscany, heard the story, and, at the same time, that the fugitives were then in Florence. And as rumour was also saying extraordinary things of Bianca's beauty, he conceived a strong desire to see the heroine of the story.

All the contemporary writers speak much of this same beauty and fascination; but it must be admitted, that the portraits and medals, which remain to show us what she really was, do not by any means confirm their praises. It is true, that these representations of her show her to us at a later period of her life, and that the coarse strongly marked features may well have been less repulsive at sixteen. Montaigne, in the course of his tour in Italy, saw her at the Tuscan court, and has written that she was "handsome, according to the taste of the Italians, having a cheerful and plump face, considerable stoutness of person, and a bosom such as they admire." This description of her face tallies very well with the portraits, and specially with a medal which must have been struck in her later years. It is a face well calculated to express jovial, convivial cheerfulness, but coarse, vulgar, and insolent in the extreme. And to this must be added, hair, which only a courtier's flattery could term "auburn," and an ungracefully stout person. This, however, as Montaigne hints, is not in Italy thought as incompatible with beauty as on this side of the Alps; and hair, that we should term decidedly red, is often much admired among the Italians.

Francesco was at the time of Bianca's arrival in Florence, in his twenty–third year, and, as far as can be judged from the reports of the contemporary writers, had up to that time distinguished himself rather as a reader and student than in any less creditable way. The Court of Cosmo, however, was by no means a favourable school for the education of his children. Some of the scenes recorded by contemporary writers as having been witnessed there are of a nature wholly irreproducible here. And in the last year before that of Bianca's arrival at Florence, the year 1562, had occurred one of those horrible domestic tragedies, which seem to have been a peculiar specialty of the Medicean race.

Cosmo's two sons, Giovanni and Garzia, the former nineteen and a cardinal of two years' standing, and the latter fifteen years of age, were hunting together near Leghorn. Some dispute arose respecting the sport, on which the younger brother gave the elder a mortal wound with his rapier. Giovanni died at Leghorn. Garzia presented himself before his father to implore his pardon for the crime; and was killed by a similar wound from his father's sword, as he knelt at his feet! Of course other and unexceptionably legitimate causes were found and published to account for both deaths. All which the respectable classes pretended to believe; but jotted down their own notions of the matter in "ricordi," destined to be safely buried in the family muniment rooms; but destined also to infallible resurrection at the summons of inevitable Dryasdust. While the unrespectable classes noted to each other under their breath, that the bodies of the two princes had not been exposed to the public view, as was the often inconvenient custom with regard to dead highnesses; and muttered their conclusions accordingly. The mother of the two princes, Eleonora di Toledo, died of grief as was supposed, and as might well be, in the same year.

Shortly afterwards the more consolable father, having given in marriage to a scion of the noble family of Panciatici his mistress, Eleonora degli Albizzi, whom her noble father had sold to him, asked another noble father of Florence for his daughter, the beautiful Camilla Martelli, to be her successor. The honour was of course gratefully accepted by the proud patrician, and Camilla Martelli became the mother of Virginia de' Medici in 1568. But soon afterwards the lady began to be troubled with scruples of conscience, and consulted his Holiness, Pius V., upon the subject, who counselled patience! meaning that she should wait and see whether the sovereign might not be induced to marry her. And accordingly as it happened, that state reasons made it desirable for Cosmo to conciliate the pontiff, he decided on gaining his heart entirely by marrying "La Martelli" in 1570, and by giving up to the Church his subject Carnesecchi, to be burned as a heretic.

The other members of the family at the time of Bianca's arrival in Florence, were Ferdinando, the second surviving son of the grand duke, who at the age of fourteen had just been made a cardinal, and who was generally at Rome; Pietro, a third son, aged nine; and Isabella, Cosmo's daughter, who had been married to Paolo Giordano Orsini in 1553. She was, we are told, the life and brightest ornament of the Tuscan court. She had refused to follow her husband to Rome; and as Cosmo had supported her in her refusal, so far as manifesting his wish that she should continue to reside in Florence, Orsini had left her there, while he remained in his own city, and rarely or never troubled his wife, who had no love for him, with his presence.

Such were the members of the Tuscan court in 1563–4; when Francesco determined to gratify his curiosity by getting in some way a sight of the beautiful stranger in Florence, who had been so much talked of. It was not very difficult to accomplish this. Somebody was found to suggest to Bianca and her mother–in–law, that they would do wisely to seek an interview with the Marchesa Mondragone, the wife of Francesco's Spanish tutor, who might very easily induce the prince to obtain from the Republic of Venice a pardon for her husband and herself. The bait was readily taken, and they were told that the Marchesa would receive them in the Casino of S. Marco.

This small but remarkably elegant building, rebuilt as it now stands in 1775 by the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo, can hardly fail at the present day to attract the attention of any stranger passing through the Piazza of St. Mark. It was then a casino belonging to the Medici; and is still the property of the Grand Duke of Tuscany. A "casino" was an important portion of the social arrangements of those days. A "little house" for the transaction of such matters as the "convenances"—Anglice hypocrisies—did not allow of being conveniently carried on in the large house, which was the noble family's residence, was found to contribute very essentially to the maintenance of that propriety, which is so dear to a people to whom seeming is ever more important than being. Most of the wealthier members of the aristocracy had such conveniences, and the proprieties of Italian life would hardly have been by any possibility maintained without them.

Now this casino of the young Prince Francesco was, as has been seen, very near the humble dwelling of Bianca. The "tugurio" of her husband was on the south side of the small square facing St. Mark's church, and the Prince's casino at right angles to it on the west side—not a stone's throw distant. So that Bianca and her mother–in–law were able to wait[148] on the kind Marchesa there, with very slight departure from their rule of not quitting the shelter of their home.

The Marchesa Mondragone received them with the utmost affability; inquired with most amiable interest into the particulars of Bianca's story; and, when it chanced that her husband the Marchese entered the room, she seized the opportunity of at once interesting him in the case. The affability of the Spaniard exceeded even that of his wife. He had not the least doubt of being able to induce his Excellency to use his influence with the Republic;—she might consider the matter as good as settled. Then the Marchesa suddenly bethought herself that she wanted to know, whether some dresses of hers were made in the right Venetian fashion. Would Bianca come with her and look at them, while the Marchese did himself the pleasure of remaining with the Signora Bonaventuri. So Bianca was walked off into another room with her charming new Spanish friend, who, after showing her some of those matters, which women, it seems, used to find amusement in looking at some three hundred years ago, under pretence of seeking keys to open other cupboards, or something of that sort, slipped away, leaving her guest alone, but fully occupied in admiring the profusion of magnificence that characterised the apartment she was in.

In another minute a curtain was raised from before an opposite door, and Bianca found herself alone with Francesco. The details of what passed at that first interview between these two persons, who for the remainder of their lives were to exercise so strange and so pernicious a reciprocal influence, are recorded by more than one writer.[149] Yet it is little likely that either of them should have afterwards repeated the mere matters of course proper to "the situation," which are set down as having been uttered by them. It is true, that "La Mondragone" may be well supposed to have been watching the happy progress of her handiwork within ear–shot. The only circumstance at all worth noting of all that is said to have passed, whether true or fictitious, is that Bianca is stated to have at once comprehended on seeing the Prince what his errand was, and the whole motive with which she had been induced to visit the Marchesa. She pleaded for "her honour!" He assured her that it should be abundantly cared for, &c. &c.

Whether the relationship in which they were thereafter to stand towards each other was finally settled there and then, or whether other such interviews were required for the completion of their arrangements does not appear. It was needful, it seems, even at Florence in 1564, that some regard should be paid to appearances by a prince in Francesco's position just at that time. A marriage was being arranged for him with Joan of Austria, daughter of the Emperor Francis, which was eventually celebrated in December 1565. And the German "barbari" might have taken offence if the prince's wooing of his wife and his mistress had been too openly simultaneous. It would have been indecent—would not have looked well, which was, above all things, what was needful. Francesco too was in that same year, 1564, entrusted with the reins of government by his father, who, though he did not formally abdicate the throne, yet left thenceforward all the management of State matters to his son.

So that under the circumstances the left–handed wooing had to seek for awhile the shelter of the Casino;—furnishing thus an excellent illustration of the utility of that convenient institution.

All then that the secrecy of that retreat has permitted us to know with certainty as to the duration of Bianca's resistance to the Prince is comprised in the fact, that everything was satisfactorily arranged between them within six months of her arrival in Florence.[150] And as after that arrival she gave birth to a daughter, named Pellegrina, it must be concluded, that no very great length of time was consumed in coming to an understanding.

And here it may be clearly stated that this was, as far as can be gathered from the writings of her innumerable abusers, Bianca's last fault of this sort. For the rest of her days she seems to have been perfectly faithful as mistress and as wife to Francesco. It is, perhaps, the only one word we shall have an opportunity of saying in her favour;—so mercifully inclined readers may make the most of it.

But, by the bye, the lady's husband! He seems to have been rather forgotten by us. But so he is also by the original tellers of the story. None of them hints a doubt of the possibility of his making any difficulty in the matter. We are shortly told, that the gracious sovereign appointed him to a place of "guarda–roba," some keeper of property of some sort. So things were made pleasant to all parties; and the adventurous banker's clerk made no difficulty in admitting that his wife was henceforward, as the chroniclers phrase is, "cosa di Francesco;"—goods belonging to his Highness.