in the charge of his paternal aunt, Margaret of Savoy, then Regent of the
provinces. Upon the death of that princess, the child was entrusted to
the care of the Emperor's sister, Mary, Queen Dowager of Hungary, who had
succeeded to the government, and who occupied it until the abdication.
The huntress-queen communicated her tastes to her youthful niece, and
Margaret soon outrivalled her instructress. The ardor with which she
pursued the stag, and the courageous horsemanship which she always
displayed, proved her, too, no degenerate descendant of Mary of Burgundy.
Her education for the distinguished position in which she had somewhat
surreptitiously been placed was at least not neglected in this
particular. When, soon after the memorable sack of Rome, the Pope and the
Emperor had been reconciled, and it had been decided that the Medici
family should be elevated upon the ruins of Florentine liberty,
Margaret's hand was conferred in marriage upon the pontiff's nephew
Alexander. The wretched profligate who was thus selected to mate with the
Emperor's eldest born child and to appropriate the fair demesnes of the
Tuscan republic was nominally the offspring of Lorenzo de Medici by a
Moorish slave, although generally reputed a bastard of the Pope himself.
The nuptials were celebrated with great pomp at Naples, where the Emperor
rode at the tournament in the guise of a Moorish warrior. At Florence
splendid festivities had also been held, which were troubled with omens
believed to be highly unfavorable. It hardly needed, however,
preternatural appearances in heaven or on earth to proclaim the marriage
ill-starred which united a child of twelve years with a worn-out
debauchee of twenty-seven. Fortunately for Margaret, the funereal
portents proved true. Her husband, within the first year of their wedded
life, fell a victim to his own profligacy, and was assassinated by his
kinsman, Lorenzino de Medici. Cosmo, his successor in the tyranny of
Florence, was desirous of succeeding to the hand of Margaret, but the
politic Emperor, thinking that he had already done enough to conciliate
that house, was inclined to bind to his interests the family which now
occupied the papal throne. Margaret was accordingly a few years
afterwards united to Ottavio Farnese, nephew of Paul the Third. It was
still her fate to be unequally matched. Having while still a child been
wedded to a man of more than twice her years, she was now, at the age of
twenty,