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. [Sidenote: 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.