aventuri gave out that she was
_enceinte_ and began forthwith her preparations for _accouchement_. She
left her palace in the Via Maggio, under the shadow of the Pitti Palace,
and took up her abode in the Casino of the Orte Oricellari, which she
had lately purchased from the family of Rucellai, and surrounded herself
with confidential friends and attendants.

The _denouement_ came on 29th August, when the Grand Duke was informed
by Bianca's surgeon-accoucheur, that she had been delivered of a
child--a boy! Francesco was almost frantic with delight, and he hastened
to his beloved Bianca's bedside. Picking up _his_ child, he fondled him
tenderly and almost smothered him with kisses, and at once gave orders
for a ceremonial baptism. Antonio, he called him--after the kindly
patron saint of that auspicious day--when he personally handed the
child to the Archbishop at the font.

The Grand Duchess was inexpressibly shocked, she refused to see her
husband, shut herself up in her own apartments, and demanded an escort
to Vienna! The news was not long in reaching Rome, and it made Cardinal
Ferdinando furious. In a moment all the blandishments of "the Venetian"
were dissipated; the better terms lately established in Florence were
renounced, and the angry Prince, in unmeasured language, asserted that
the child was not Francesco's.

He knew well enough that what had come to pass, unless unchallenged,
would imperil his presumptive title. First it was sought to throw doubt
upon Bianca's actual maternity, and next to secure the person of the
little boy.

Bianca and Antonio, under a strong guard, were sent off to Pratolino,
hers and Francesco's best-loved retreat--they had together planned its
beauties. There, during her make-believe convalescence, she came to
consider the very serious nature of her love's stratagem, and she
determined to make a full confession to her lover. The Grand Duke was
thunderstruck, but at once he recognised the emphatic importance of
secrecy; for, as Vincenzio Borghini quaintly said: "Florence was the
greatest market in the world for tissues and materials of _all_ kinds,
and full of evil eyes, and ears, and tongues!" Meanwhile Ferdinando
had not let the water run under the Arno bridges for nothing. He
discovered the surgeon-accoucheur who had attended Madonna Bianca--one
Giovanni Gazzi. He maintained the fact of the confinement, but
incidentally named the wet nurse, Giovanna Santi. This woman admitted
tha