"As for the others of the party, they had remained in the pit half dead, lying there insensible, till they were carried to beds prepared for the purpose, where they were properly attended by medical men provided for that end."
"As soon as the Grand Duke had spoken as above, a voice was heard to sing an ode," duly recorded by Malespini, but which the reader may be spared, in which the flattery of his highness is piled as only Italian hyperbole can pile it. "Meantime, the beautiful and elegant girls," says the writer, "among whom was one of exceeding loveliness, named Milla Capraia, did not cease to caress those noble knights; till suddenly another strophe was heard beginning 'Depart, oh noble heroes!' &c., and so the diversion came to a conclusion."
Such, considerably abridged, is the account of Bianca's mode of entertaining her guests among the classic shades where Lorenzo's Platonists had speculated, and Macchiavelli had stirred the patriotism of the last free sons of Florence.
It is perhaps worth remarking, that the words to which the readers attention was called,—"the Grand Duke _pretended_ to recover himself"—seem to show, that _he_ was in the secret of the performances all the time; and that the zest of the joke consisted in frightening the silly courtiers out of their wits, while their magnanimous sovereign should enjoy their discomfiture, himself _seeming_ to be superior to all such terrors; and should be worshipped as a hero on the strength thereof by Miss Milla Capraia, who was to _seem_ to put perfect faith in his heroism.
But while Bianca and the Grand Duke and the court were thus amusing themselves, a very different scene was passing in that corner of the huge pile of the Pitti palace, which contained the private apartments of the Duchess. At first the birth of her son had been a matter of immense rejoicing and triumph to the unhappy woman. The consequent retirement of Bianca had been a precious balm to her long mortified pride; and she had flattered herself that at last brighter days were before her, and that the mother of the heir to his crown would at least be held of some account in her husband's court, if not in his heart.
But gradually all these hopes failed her. Not only did the odious rival return, as we have seen, and recover all her previous ascendancy, but the arrival of her brother Vittorio, and the marked favour immediately shown to him by the Grand Duke, who received him as he might have done a visitor of princely rank, seemed to prove, that there was no hope of her being able to struggle against Francesco's infatuated affection for his mistress. The unhappy princess was expecting to be again confined in the spring of 1578, when these sorrows threw her back into the melancholy from which she had been for a brief space roused by the short–lived reconciliation with her husband. And there is little doubt that they contributed[177] to produce the fatal result which put an end to her joyless life on the 11th of May, 1578.[178]