Francesco, moreover, was not a man of a festive disposition. On the contrary, he was almost always under the shadow of a black and unwholesome melancholy. Not that he abstained from excess in many ways. Indeed, all the habits of his life were especially marked by the absence of all moderation. But a savage and ungenial nature showed itself in his pleasures as in his more serious moments. His violence of ill–temper, and sombre suspicious moodiness, must often have taxed to the utmost all Bianca's powers of dissimulation, and all her forbearance. The lot, which she sacrificed fair fame, peace of mind, and ease of conscience to attain, was one which few would have endured without flinching, had it been awarded to them to bear it. All the contemporary accounts represent Bianca's powers of fascination and persuasion to have been remarkable. And she had need of them all to soothe the ill–governed mind, and calm the half–insane violences of the Grand Duke's savage moods.
THE DUKE'S MOODINESS.
These had of late years been growing on him. He had no child to be his heir; and this was a constant source of brooding discontent and melancholy. His wife, Giovanna, had given birth to several infants; but they were all daughters. Bianca had never presented him with a child. To Francesco it was an odious and intolerable thought that either of his brothers should be the successor to his throne. And it was as much a matter of repining to him that Bianca was childless, as that his wife should not have given him an heir. A subsequent marriage legitimises a child born out of wedlock, according to the Romish code. Failing other means, pontifical dispensations were always at hand to help orthodox and Church–loving princes over such difficulties. And Francesco would have deemed a son by Bianca almost as desirable as one by his legitimate wife. But the years went on, and he continued without either.
All this contributed, as may be easily imagined, to make Bianca's task a hard one, and her life a continued series of anxieties, contrivances, plottings, and machinations.
But Francesco had another passion, which led him to look with a discontented eye on the disorders and excesses of his court,—his avarice. He, like his father, Cosmo, was rich, far beyond what might have been supposed, from his rank and position among the sovereigns of Europe. No mode of extracting money from his subjects was left untried by him. Venal pardons, excessive taxation, and wholesale confiscations, helped to fill his coffers. But he derived still larger revenues from the trading speculations which both he and Cosmo carried on in almost every part of Europe. There was hardly one of the great commercial centres of the time, where the Grand Duke of Florence had not a share in some banking concern. He was also interested as a partner in a great variety of speculations of various kinds. And besides all this, he traded largely with ships of his own in grain, wool, pepper and other spices, silk and leather.
The vast wealth thus amassed he used in purchasing by large loans the good–will and seeming consideration of the courts of Paris and Madrid. In both he was despised and disliked. But both were so accustomed to look upon him as a squeezeable money–dealer, that we find the French court absolutely making jealous complaints[159] of the amount he had furnished to that of Spain.
All these circumstances combined to make the mood of Francesco dangerous to those about him in the years which immediately followed his father's death. Don Pietro's recklessly scandalous life, and much worse still his constant demands for money, annoyed him. The remonstrances and preachments of the Cardinal Ferdinando from Rome irritated him. But Francesco was perfect as a dissembler. No man or woman was his confidant. Not even to Bianca did he show any sign that his ill–humour was rising to a point above its usual mark.
THE CARDINAL'S VEXATIONS.
So the reckless holiday–keeping court circle spun on in their usual course around him. Isabella and Eleonora were busy with their free–lance captains, and court pages. Bianca was hoarding money to send to her greedy family at Venice, or was holding secret council with some philtre–dealer or black–art professor of one sort or another. Pietro was wilder, more lawless, and audacious in his debaucheries than ever. And the highly respectable Ferdinand was anxiously, and almost despairingly, watching them all from Rome, while they were continually throwing down, by the disreputableness of their lives, the edifice of the family greatness, which he was ever laboriously and dexterously scheming to build up.
It must be admitted that his respectable Eminence the Cardinal had enough to provoke and embitter him with his relatives. He and Bianca had from the first been declared enemies. He deplored his brother's weakness in becoming enamoured of this designing Venetian woman. He was indignant at the publicity Francesco had permitted his connection with her to assume. He remonstrated again and again with him on the impropriety of allowing her to have the influence in matters of government which it was notorious she exercised, and on the impolicy of exposing himself to the contempt and ridicule of every court in Europe on her account. But his exhortations had only had the effect of producing a state of enmity between Francesco and himself, which Bianca is accused of having used all her art to perpetuate and envenom.[160]