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]

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