than ever to him, and before his recovery, in 1567, they were privately married.
This was kept very secret during the mourning for the late grand-duchess. Nobody was surprised at Bianca's having apartments assigned her in the palace, because a report prevailed that she had been appointed governess to the young princesses. Meanwhile Francesco was employed in sounding the opinion of the king of Spain, concerning his marriage, without whose concurrence he thought fit to do nothing of any importance; and, having been apprized of his approbation, he published his union with Bianca at the expiration of the mourning.
Cardinal Ferdinando seems to have received intelliligence of this marriage some time before it was publicly known. He refrained from manifesting his displeasure; he did not then suppose she would be declared grand-duchess. But Francesco was aware that his matrimonial connection with a person, who had fled from Venice, had been married to a man of vulgar extraction, and afterwards been his own mistress, would be generally considered in a very dubious light. He endeavoured therefore to elude this unfavourable opinion, by applying to the Venetian senate to confer upon Bianca the title of a daughter of the Republic, These republicans had long before, from deep political motives, created this title, by which they enabled the daughters of the patricians to intermarry with sovereigns, and to assume the rank of princesses. The lady, who obtained this distinction, had, in her quality of a daughter of Venice, the precedence over all the rest of the Italian princesses, and was, by all the world considered as the daughter of a sovereign.
On the seventeenth of July, 1597, Bianca was, by a
